The return-of-investment benefits stem from the provision of i) real-time, ii) scalable, iii) ubiquitous, iv) reliable and v) heterogeneous Big Data, and thus associated ... entitled âData. Mining for Internet of Things: A Surveyâ, deals with the issues.
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 16, NO. 1, FIRST QUARTER 2014
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Editorial: IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials Machine-to-Machine Technologies & Architectures Mischa Dohler, Joerg Swetina, Angeliki Alexiou, Chonggang Wang, Patricia Martigne, and Kan Zheng
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E ARE currently witnessing the emergence of an internet in which industrial as well as consumer objects are able to connect to the Internet, tweet or be queried. Whilst the impact onto economies and societies around the world is undisputed, the technologies facilitating such a ubiquitous connectivity have struggled so far and have only recently commenced to take shape. A cornerstone to this connectivity landscape is and will be Machine-to-Machine (M2M). M2M generally refers to Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) able to measure, deliver, digest and react upon information in an autonomous fashion, i.e. with no or really minimal human interaction during deployment, configuration, operation and maintenance phases. Examples of M2M technologies are: telemetry readings of a vehicle fleet; measurements of the health state of the elderly; occupancy measurements of parking in cities; remote metering of gas consumption; etc. M2M is increasingly used in industries for i) repetitive measurements, like delivering gas meter data once a day; and ii) time critical jobs with decisions taken within a few milliseconds based on the input of a large amount of data. Indeed, whilst M2M is mainly about the connectivity infrastructure, the value it unlocks relates to the Big Data potential. The return-of-investment benefits stem from the provision of i) real-time, ii) scalable, iii) ubiquitous, iv) reliable and v) heterogeneous Big Data, and thus associated opportunities. To facilitate said opportunities, M2M systems bear very specific and unparalleled engineering challenges in both research and development. Prime design drivers here are the need for virtually zero-outage, immediate-response and highefficiency to support reliable, green, long-living and delayconstrained M2M applications. The aim of this special issue on machine-to-machine thus was to collect from industrial and academic players tutorials and surveys related to M2M protocols, technologies, architectures and key functionalities. We have received a total of 25 submissions from which 6 were finally accepted for this special issue. The papers span from M2M access technologies, to security issues, research
M. Dohler is with King’s College London, UK. J. Swetina is with NEC Labs Europe, Germany. A. Alexiou is with University of Piraeus, Greece. Chonggang Wang is with Interdigital, USA. P. Martigne is with Orange, France. K. Zheng is with BUPT, China. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/SURV.2014.012114.00000
pertaining to service discovery and service provisioning platforms, as well as data mining. It also contains one M2M application example. Notably, in the first paper, Laya et al. deal with the emerging problematic of the access channel in LTE-A systems in their paper entitled “Is the Random Access Channel of LTE and LTE-A Suitable for M2M Communications? A Survey of Alternative”. The rational of this work stems from the fact that with an uptake of M2M technology, the access channel will congest and overload easily. This paper thus provides an overview of the different solutions introduced by different academic and industrial groups around the world to address this emerging problem. The authors not only focus on delay but also on energy efficiency in their discussions. The second paper, authored by Mirzadeh et al. and entitled “Secure Device Pairing — A Survey” deals with important security issues related to M2M pairing mechanisms. A large set of challenges arises due to the wireless nature of the access channel (see first paper in this special issue). A security taxonomy is introduced, and solutions within this taxonomy presented and discussed in great details. Notably, protocols with and without a trusted entity are distinguished, and internal versus external adversaries are distinguished. The third paper, authored by Villaverde et al. and entitled “Service Discovery Protocols for Constrained Machine-toMachine Communications”, deals with the ability to discover service and application capabilities of devices in an automated way. These mechanisms rely on a secure connection (see second paper in this special issue) and is instrumental for the usage of service platforms (see fourth paper in this special issue). The authors note that in order to realize the decoupling of M2M applications and services, energy efficient and automated service discovery mechanisms must be designed. Prior art is difficult to use due to the constraint nature of the devices. The authors thus review the emerging body of work in this field with a major focus on standardized approaches as advocated by the IETF. The authors discuss advantages and disadvantages of introduced solutions, as well as compare performance for different M2M scenarios. The fourth paper, authored by Kim et al. and entitled “M2M Service Platforms: Survey, Issues, and Enabling Technologies”, exposes a great deal about the importance and issues around M2M service platforms. It is argued that these platforms are a catalyst for M2M market uptake, which will gain in importance with an increasing ease of service discovery
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IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 16, NO. 1, FIRST QUARTER 2014
mechanisms (see third paper in this special issue) and the availability of standardized M2M technologies. The authors introduce a wide set of existing platforms, allowing them to outline design requirements and functionalities. An innovative M2M service platform architecture is then presented, which considers prior insights. Finally, the authors outline future research directions for M2M service platform and network developments. The fifth paper, authored by Tsai et al. and entitled “Data Mining for Internet of Things: A Survey”, deals with the issues arising when handling and analyzing the large data volumes generated by service platforms (see fourth paper in this special issue). The authors expand on the observation that a major enabler of the Big Data potential is the technique of data mining. The authors thus survey a variety of data mining approaches, where each is discussed in great details. Focus here is on clustering, classification and frequency pattern mechanisms. The paper is concluded with a discussion on the trends in the field, as well as open challenges. Finally, the sixth paper, authored by Chen et al. and entitled “A Survey of Recent Developments in Home M2M Networks” focuses on a specific application scenario, notably the usage of M2M technologies in home environments. Capitalizing on the insights of all of above papers, the authors introduce technologies and applications emerging in the home networking environment. They highlight the potential of healthcare, energy management and entertainment applications, to which M2M technologies are instrumental. The authors dwell on global home networking initiatives, and discuss in great details challenges and open issues in this emerging field of research and innovation. As guest editors, we would like thank all the authors for their submissions to this feature topic; even though we were not able to accept all papers, the large number of submissions and the large amount of surveyed material therein proved that the area of M2M technologies and networks is of growing interest. We would also like to express our appreciation to all reviewers who have provided quality and timely reviews in this emerging field. Furthermore, this special issue would not have happened without the constant support of Prof Ekram Hossain, the Editor in Chief; as well as of the publishing staff of the journal and the IEEE. We hope that this feature issue appeals to both the academic and industrial readership, and inspires future work in the emerging area of machine-to-machine technologies. The Editors, November 2013.
Mischa Dohler is Chair Professor in Wireless Communications at King’s College London, UK. He is Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE ComSoc, Fellow of the IEEE (2014), and Editor-in-Chief of ETT. He frequently features as keynote speaker and had press coverage by BBC and Wall Street Journal. He is a tech company investor and also entrepreneur, being the cofounder, former CTO and now with the Board of Directors of Worldsensing. He is fluent in 6 languages. In the framework of the Mobile VCE, he has pioneered research on distributed cooperative space-time encoded communication systems, dating back to December 1999 and holding some early key patents. He has published more than 160 technical journal and conference papers at a citation h-index of 32 and citation g-index of 72, holds a dozen patents, authored, co-edited and contributed to 19 books, has given more than 30 international short-courses, and participated in ETSI, IETF and other standardisation activities. He has been TPC member and cochair of various conferences, such as technical chair of IEEE PIMRC 2008 held in Cannes, France. He is/has been holding various editorial positions for numerous IEEE and non-IEEE journals and special issues.
Joerg Swetina studied Chemistry and Mathematics at the University of Vienna, Austria and later conducted research in Theoretical Chemistry. Moving from academia to industry he led a development team dealing with GSM call processing and software testing at Siemens Austria. Since the early days of 3GPP he had been representing Siemens and later Nokia Siemens Networks in standardization bodies like ETSI SMG, 3GPP, OMA and others. In 2008 he moved to NEC Europe in Heidelberg, Germany, continuing his work in standards. Additionally to 3GPP his current field of interest covers Machine-to-Machine communication. He is active in ETSI TC M2M and is currently acting as vice chair of the requirements group of the ‘oneM2M Global Initiative’ organisation. Dr. Swetina is married and is living in Vienna and Heidelberg.
Angeliki Alexiou received the Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 1994 and the PhD in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of London in 2000. Since May 2009 she is an assistant professor at the Department of Digital Systems, University of Piraeus, Greece, where she conducts research and teaches courses in the area of Broadband Communications. Prior to this appointment she was with Bell Laboratories, Wireless Research, Lucent Technologies, now Alcatel-Lucent, in Swindon, UK, first as a member of technical staff (January 1999-February 2006) and later as a Technical Manager (March 2006-April 2009). Her current research interests include multiple antenna systems and multihop communications, advanced signal processing and efficient radio resource management for future generation wireless systems. Dr Alexiou is a co-recipient of Bell Labs PresidentÕs Gold Award in 2002 for contributions to Bell Labs Layered Space-Time (BLAST) project and the Central Bell Labs Teamwork Award in 2004 for role model teamwork and technical achievements in the IST FITNESS project. Dr Alexiou is the Chair of the Working Group on New Air Interfaces, Relaybased systems and Smart antennas of the Wireless World Research Forum. She is a member of the IEEE, the IE? and the Technical Chamber of Greece.
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS & TUTORIALS, VOL. 16, NO. 1, FIRST QUARTER 2014
Chonggang Wang received the Ph.D. degree from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT) in 2002. He is currently with InterDigital Communications. His R&D focuses on: Internet of Things (IoT), Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications, Future Internet, and Mobile Networks, including technology development and standardization. Before joining InterDigital in 2009, he performed R&D at NEC Laboratories America, AT&T Labs Research, University of Arkansas Fayetteville, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Currently, he is on the editorial board for several journals/magazines including IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, and IEEE Communications Magazine and. He is and was co-editing a few special issues respectively for IEEE JSAC, IEEE Sensors Journal, IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, IEEE Network magazine, IEEE Communications magazine, etc. He is also a volunteer for numerous IEEE conferences as a member of organization committee and technical program committee.
Patricia Martigne obtained her Engineering diploma in Electronics and Telecommunications ˝ from the ‘Ecole Polytechnique FOminine’, France, in 1994. She has been working in telecommunications companies for more than 15 years, covering a panel of aspects from telecom manufacturer to the operator through the regulator. Notably, in Nortel Networks, she worked as an integration & validation R&D engineer on GSM900/1800/1900MHz base stations (radio testing, EMC and Safety testing, and validation for type approvals of the base stations in the World); she was also responsible for the accreditation of the Nortel radio ˝ tests laboratory in France. Within the ‘Agence Nationale des FrOquences’, she was working in standardization and regulatory fields (ETSI, ITU-R, CEPT) for various radiocommunication systems such as IMT-2000, DVB-T and digital HF; she also took the European leadership for an agenda item of the World Radiocommunications Conference in 2003. She is in France Telecom R&D since Sept. 2004, where she has been promoting new technologies such as UWB or cognitive radio through actions to standardization and regulation bodies, with the leadership of the corresponding sub-working-package in the European Project E2R on cognitive radio. She is now working in the M2M (Machine to Machine communications) domain, as an R&D project manager for elaboration of M2M demonstrators and as a Rapporteur in ETSI M2M standardization committee, contributing to the evolution towards the IoT. She has also been nominated in August 2010 the Liaison Rapporteur between ITU-T Smart Grid Focus Group and ETSI M2M.
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Kan Zheng is IEEE senior member and IEICE member. Currently, he is an associate professor in the school of information and communication engineering, Beijing University of Posts &Telecommunications (BUPT). He received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D degree from BUPT, in 1996, 2000 and 2005 respectively. He was an R&D researcher in Siemens Ltd and France Telecomm (Orange) R&D, respectively, studying the key algorithms in the wireless communication systems. His current research interests lie in the field of cooperative communication, MIMO, radio resource management and soft-defined radio (SDR). As the 1st author, he has published about 50 papers in the journals and conferences such as IEEE Communication Magazine, IEEE Transaction on Vehicular Technology, IEEE Transaction on Broadcasting. Also, he has gained the 2nd class prize of the eighth Beijing youth researcher paper and best Ph.D thesis prize in BUPT, 2005. Now he is the project leader of several national sponsored projects such as NSFC project, doctoral program of higher education. Meanwhile, he is one of main members of several eleven-five national key projects.
