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