A Prevalent M2M Gateway in Every Home - Smartness to Follow!

By Alok Raj

Machine to Machine (M2M) and/or Internet of Things (IoT) is the buzz word these days. First, language was the barrier to communicate among humans, then came telephones, followed by PCs with internet, then, wireless phones, followed by smart phones. Slowly, communication among “things” has become more important. The idea is old, but has grabbed attention these days because of low powered communication protocols such as Zigbee/Bluetooth-4.0/6lowPan and Eclipse supported MQTT/CoAP and OMA-DM protocols, finding some concrete space within the memory of “things”.

The “things” above means devices – devices that are either dumb and/or smart. The smart devices communicate with a remote server, where data once arrived would get processed and deterministic information is derived. Things, which are not smart (e.g. sensors) need a proxy called gateway, to communicate with the server.

One good application of M2M is home automation, where the intention is to read or control things at home remotely; there are two approaches – everything at home can have a Wi-Fi transmitter/receiver, plus a control board (read microcontroller). This means, every electrical point (bulbs, geyser, AC, TV etc.) should have a Wi-Fi unit attached and always be connected to the internet.

Second approach would be, the devices communicating over low powered protocols to a local gateway and the gateway is smartly connected to the internet. In this case, the things need to have low powered protocol(s) transceiver and a control module. So the question is - what could be this “gateway”, with minimum investment?

There are three options:

1. Smart phones – Almost everywhere, but once the user moves out of home, things at home need a gateway, which is always switched ON and connected. So, Smart phones could be a good gateway candidate, but mainly on the move. 
2. Set Top Box – Can be found almost in every household. Except in a few countries, the world is going digital and QoS have improved because of Digital Broadcast. 
3. The Wi-Fi router – NOT found everywhere. Not everyone can afford it as well!

Option 2 looks more viable with ipv4/ipv6 stack already integrated with the set top box software architecture. Also, currently available set top boxes have off chip DRAM size, equaling more than 2 GB DDR3 (remember, for decoding HD quality video/audio (MPEG-2, AAC, H.264 etc. we need space)), sufficient space to run something extra!

With most of the IoT platforms implemented in JAVA, running JVM on a set top box should not be a problem; in particular, the open M2M platforms very much mandate to implement various IoT service capabilities (which can be managed remotely) in an OSGI framework. This framework is mounted upon a JVM, and if we go back to history, the very original idea of OSGI framework was to manage smart appliances and other internet-enabled devices at homes, remotely, for e.g., a restricted environment like a set top box.

The other important aspect is the low powered MAN (M2M area network – includes IEEE 802.15.1 [i.3], Zigbee, Bluetooth, IETF ROLL, ISA100.11a, etc. or PLC, M-BUS, Wireless M-BUS and KNX) integration with Set top box (STB) platform. In the same timeframe of IoT becoming popular, key semiconductor vendors had already integrated, e.g. Bluetooth (including Bluetooth Smart) to their reference STB platforms.

Few of the vendors have even System on Chip (SoC) integration of low powered RF protocol such as Zigbee and RF4CE. The integration of these two protocols was done to replace the “the always lost” IR (infrared) TV remote at home, and also to get rid of “always in line of sight” constraint of the age old device.

Bluetooth (BT) (2.0/4.0) is best suited for monitoring health and environment at home and few profiles of Zigbee. For instance, Zigbee PRO is the best suited profile for home automation.

Moreover, the current Zigbee protocols also support beacon and non–beacon enabled networks. This means, the set top box at home would also help in locating misplaced mobiles/key rings etc. within a smart home.

One key aspect of M2M is the data representation, as the volume of data would grow exponentially as every “thing” would try to become SMART. European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) mandates that every “thing” and the service capabilities of M2M platform should be REST (Representational State Transfer), a renowned architecture style) based. Hence, REST representation matters. This serialized representation would be sent to and from internet over satellite (from and to set top box, respectively) as the IP is already integrated with the STB platform.

Set top box being statically located (receiving information from geosynchronous satellite), unlike a smart phone, can be easily tracked, if at all someone tries to hack your data, can be seized easily, plus scrambling/descrambling methods used for an mpeg transport stream could be handy in M2M cases too.

This infers that a Set Top Box could be the best fit to run an ETSI compliant gateway among all the affordable and viable options (as cited above) within the context of a “SMART HOME”.

Set top box vendors are creating new roadmap for next generation service deployments (Home security, energy/health monitoring, environmental system at home and definitely the entertainment system). Hence, it is most preferable for set top box vendors/operators, who would and should be launching the smart home product, and not the TV makers or devices’/sensors’ manufacturers. Icing on the cake is the Smart City Infrastructure. Smart City is inclusive of smart homes other than smart public services and any infrastructure outside home. With each home already having a set top box under the TV unit, which is going to play the role of an M2M Gateway, the dream of having smart cities is not far behind; it is a reality of the near future.