About M2M standards and their possible extensions

Manfred Sneps-Sneppe

 Ventspils University College, Ventspils, Latvia,{ manfreds.sneps@gmail.com }

 

Dmitry Namiot

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

{ dnamiot@gmail.com }

BCFIC-2012, Vilnius, 27-04-2012

What about

Part 1. EC Standardization mandate M/441Part 2. Protocol Meter-Bus for measuringPart 3. On M2M API standardsPart 4. EU-Russia Partnership for Modernization

M2M communications industry forecast

Analysys Mason forecasts that the number of M2M device worldwide connections will grow from 62 million in 2010 to 2.1 billion devices in 2020, at a 36% year-on-year growth rate. Over 90 percent of forecast connections will utilize wireless.

Part 1. EC Standardization mandate M/441

Considering M2M communications as a central point of Future Internet, European Commission creates standardization mandate M/441.

The mandate M/441, issued in 2009 to CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, in the field of measuring instruments for the development of an open architecture for utility meters (water, gas, electricity, heat), involving communication protocols enabling interoperability, is a major development in shaping the future European standards for smart metering and Advanced Metering Infrastructures.

M2M system consists of three main domains

M2M Area Network: between M2M Devices and M2M Gateway. Examples: ZigBee, Bluetooth; M-BUS, Wireless M-BUS.M2M Application (Server): middleware layer where data goes through the various application services.

М/441: smart metering interfaces  

Electricity meter communications (E Interface)Non-electricity meter communications (M InterfaceDisplay and Home automation (H interface)Interface G: PSTN networks, GPRS and UMTS, DSL, TV

Part 2. Protocol Meter-Bus for measuring

microchip Texas Instruments TSS721

Open Metering System

M2M architecture interfaces

1 - between platform and external service providers2 - between platform and the customer (e.g.web browser)3 - for installation support, access to remote DB, etc.4 - to backbone IP network5 - application specific (non-IP based, e.g., M-bus, and requires GW)

The Open API for M2M applications are developed jointly in Eurescom study P1957 and the EU FP7 SENSEI project.

Actually, in this Open API we can see the big influence of Parlay specification (so called Parlay/OSA API), to open up the networks by defining, establishing, and supporting a common industry-standard APIs.

Parlay Group also specifies the Parlay Web services API, known as Parlay X API, which is much simpler than Parlay/OSA API to enable IT developers to use it without network expertise.

Part 3. On M2M API standards

Activities on M2M API standards

Besides ETSI standards we should mention other participants too. 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) has issued a number of specifications dealing with requirements that M2M services and M2M communication imposes on the mobile network.

The Telecommunications Industry Association - TR-50 Engineering Committee Smart Device Communications: to develop and maintain physical-medium-agnostic interface standards

ITU-T covers the issue of M2M communication via the special Ubiquitous Sensor Networks-related groups (the area of networked intelligent sensors).

Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) develops mobile service enabler specifications. OMA drives service enabler architectures and open enabler interfaces that are independent of the underlying wireless networks and platforms.

Main Open API categories (1)

GroupingA group here is defined as a common set of attributes (data elements) shared between member elements. On practice it is about the definition of addressable and exchangeable data sets. Just note, as it is important for our future suggestions, there are no persistence mechanisms for groupsTransactionsService capability features and their service primitives optionally include a transaction ID in order to allow relevant service capabilities to be part of a

transaction. In the terms of transactions management Open API presents the classical 2-phase commit model. By the way, we should note here that this model practically does not work in the large-scale web applications. We think it is very important because without scalability we can not think about “billions of connected devices”.Application InteractionThe application interaction part is added in order to support development of simple M2M applications with only minor application specific data definitions: readings, observations and commands.

Main Open API categories (2)

MessagingThe message modes are single Object messaging, Object group messaging, and any object messaging. Think about this as Message Broker.

Event notification and presenceCompensationFair and flexible compensation schemes between cooperating and competing parties are required to correlate resource consumption and cost, e.g. in order to avoid

anomalous resource consumption. Similar to Parlay’s offering for Charging API.

SessionsA session shall be understood to represent the state of active communication between

Connected Objects. OpenAPI is REST based, so, the endpoints should be presented as some URI’s capable to accept the basic commands GET, POST, PUT, DELETE.

It is almost impossible for developers to anticipate every new service and to integrate with every existing external service.

Our goal is to propose the proposal for some new additions in M2M APIs architecture. Namely, to propose web intents as add-on for the more traditional REST approach in order to simplify the development phases for M2M applications.

The key moments here are: • JSON versus XML, • asynchronous communications and • integrated calls.

Web Intents vs. Open API from ETSI

Web Intents solves this problem Services register their intention to be able to handle an action on the user's behalf.

Applications request to start an action of a certain verb (for example share, edit, view, pick etc.) and the system will find the appropriate services for the user to use based on the user's preference.

Intents play the very important role in Android Architecture.

IP-PBX Asterisk and HTTP gate (proxy)(an analogy for web intents role)

Open API from ETSI - Web Intents - Web developer

Data persistence (discussion)

We need to save the data somewhere (for the future processing).

Why there is no reference API for persistence layer in the unified M2M API? It is possible in general to create data gathering API without even mentioning data persistence?

Shall we define cloud database API as a part of M2M standard or not? Once transmitted to the cloud, data can be stored, retrieved and processed without Having to address many of the underlying computing resources and processes traditionally associated with databases.

For M2M applications, this type of virtualized data storage service is ideal. It looks like NoSQL solutions are perfect fit for M2M applications.

New signaling demand

Eventually, billions of devices — such as sensors, consumer electronic devices, smart phones, PDAs and computers —will generate billions of M2M transactions. Signaling traffic will be the primary bottleneck.

According to Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs traffic modeling studies, the limiting factor is likely to be the number of session set-ups and tear-downs. In the study, up to 67 percent of computing resources in the radio network controller is consumed by M2M apps.

Simply – we need the confirmation that device is alive, that operation has been performed, etc. All this is signaling traffic.

Part 4. EU--Russia Partnership for Modernization

At the 25th EU--Russia Summit in May 2010, the two sides officially launched the Partnership for Modernization program.

Priority areas: 1) expanding opportunities for investment in key sectors driving growth and innovation, enhancing and deepening bilateral trade and economic relations, and promoting small and medium sized enterprises;

2) promoting alignment of technical regulations and standards, 3) improving transport;

4) promoting a sustainable low--carbon economy and energy efficiency, etc.

On smart home implementation

2008-2009 Ventspils University College (Latvia)the research project „Home gateway prototype for multi-tenant house”

Cooperation between Moscow Institute for electronic technology (Russia) and Riga Tech Univ

(Latvia)

What was our talk about?

1. EC Standardization mandate M/441 on M2M communications as a central point of Future Internet

2. On M2M API standards: namely, Web Intents vs. Open API from ETSI

3. Protocol Meter-Bus for measuring

4. EU--Russia Partnership for Modernization and Russian realities

Thanks for your patience!