machine to machine (M2M)

Machine to Machine(M2M) communication refers to the direct communication between any two devices: these can be computers, control devices, field devices or cell phones, backup, remote maintenance or telematics equipment.

M2M applications are increasingly found in industrial use, industrial wireless (IW), in the control of production technology equipment. There is the acquisition of data via sensors or the implementation via actuators, which can be interconnected in wireless sensor networks(WSN), the data endpoints for the sensor and actuator networks, the backend servers that aggregate all data, the data network and the control components. The data network can be a local area network( LAN), a wide area network, the Internet or Internet of Things( IoT), a wireless Internet of Things(WIoT), a WLAN or a mobile network. In M2M communication, the computing units synchronize data with each other or transfer requested data from one computing unit to another without the intervention of an operator.

Radio technologies as the basis for M2M communication

The earlier basis for M2M communication was the wired networking of terminal stations via public telephone networks. It was only with the rapid development of mobile radio technologies and WLANs that flexible radio-based communication technologies such as 802.15.4, ZigBee, LTE M2M( LTE-M), Narrow Band LTE( NB-LTE), short-range technologies or wireless M-Bus (wM-Bus) could be used. In this context, the and of 5th generation( 5G) mobile technologies play a crucial role. Solutions have also been developed for larger geographical areas with low power wide area networks( LPWAN). examples include Ingenu, nWave, SigFox, Mioty, Weightless or LoRaWAN.

Thanks to wireless sensor networks, the M2M market opened up to many new applications in logistics, security, surveillance, transportation, energy generation and distribution with automatic meter reading. The flexibility of wireless technology opens up location-independent applications to transmit data over the air from remote and mobile applications to central computers. This can involve tolls for cars and trucks, fleet management or route calculations for special vehicles. M2M can also be used to remotely control machines and record their data, monitor sick people by radio, transmit their medical data and determine their whereabouts.

In terms of communications technology, the entire application scenario can be divided into the categories of Massive Machine-Type Communication( MTC) and Mission-Critical MTC. While MTC communication involves applications with a large number of low-cost and low-energy devices, mission-critical MTC is concerned with the real-time control and automation of dynamic processes in various industrial areas.