Machine to Machine Communications

Introduction

What do applications such as Personal Health Monitoring, intelligent tracking and tracing in the supply chain, smart utility metering, remote control of vending machines, industrial wireless automation and ambient assisted living all have in common?

They are all made possible thanks to Machine to Machine Communications.

This fast-growing sector is predicted to see some 2 billion machines connected by 2010.
The cellular M2M segment in particular is forecast to produce record growth.

While many M2M deployments will make use of short-range or proprietary radio links, cellular-based M2M solutions will be preferred where mobility is required, or where high data volumes or data transfer rates are involved. Cellular-based M2M can also provide easier installation and provisioning, especially for short-term deployments.

Telecoms networks may need to be optimised to cater for these new ‘subscribers', who may have very different behaviour from current customers. Standardization is required in order to deliver cost-effective M2M solutions, and allow this market to take off.

Many component-level standards already exist, addressing various radio interfaces, different meshed or routed networking choices, or offering a choice of identity schemes. Each is optimised for a particular application scenario and there is therefore a degree of fragmentation.

Until now, little effort has been made to bring all these pieces together, and identify the standardization gaps which exist.

This is a challenge that ETSI is now confronting!

Download the M2M Technology Leaflet.

Our Role & Activities

A new ETSI Technical Committee is developing standards for Machine to Machine Communications.

The group aims to provide an end-to-end view of Machine to Machine standardization, and will co-operate closely with ETSI's activities on Next Generation Networks, and also with the work of the 3GPP standards initiative for mobile communication technologies.

ETSI's broad representation from the global telecoms and ICT industry enables us to take a ‘big picture' view. This committee includes European, American and Asian experts from telecoms network operators, equipment vendors, administrations, research bodies, and of course M2M specialist companies.

Standards

Please use the ETSI Work Programme to find further related standards.