Future Internet concepts for demand management

The “Internet of Things” (IoT) is a concept where animate and inanimate objects have the ability to collect and exchange data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. Through the utilisation of IoT and the future Internet, fine-grained, near-real time energy demand management is increasingly becoming a reality. This is achieved through real-time billing, predictive energy costs and demand response signalling using IoT as a data platform.

Installing smarter technologies at the end-user premises and communicating measurements over different network technologies provide access to information and subsequently for smarter decision making about energy management in the household. This paper presents an international research and experimental initiative linked to the Future Internet (TRESCIMO) which facilitates the validity of using these technologies as base for energy demand management. The initiative utilises a philosophy of informing customers about their energy usage behaviour through data received from smart devices that are integrated with a machine-to-machine (M2M) platform. The paper discusses opportunities presented by IoT in the management of energy use in the residential sector.

LESS: Lightweight Establishment of Secure Session: A Cross-Layer Approach Using CoAP and DTLS-PSK Channel Encryption

Secure yet lightweight protocol for communication over the Internet is a pertinent problem for constrained environments in the context of Internet of Things (IoT) / Machine to Machine (M2M) applications. This paper extends the initial approaches published in [1], [2] and presents a novel cross-layer lightweight implementation to establish a secure channel. It distributes the responsibility of communication over secure channel in between the application and transport layers. Secure session establishment is performed using a payload embedded challenge response scheme over the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) [3].

Record encryption mechanism of Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) [4] with Pre-Shared Key (PSK) [5] is used for encrypted exchange of application layer data. The secure session credentials derived from the application layer is used for encrypted exchange over the transport layer. The solution is designed in such a way that it can easily be integrated with an existing system deploying CoAP over DTLS-PSK. The proposed method is robust under different security attacks like replay attack, DoS and chosen cipher text. The improved performance of the proposed solution is established with comparative results and analysis.

An efficient resource naming for enabling constrained devices in SmartM2M architecture

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm envisions an interconnected world where things can communicate with each other, transmit state information and execute smart tasks. The number of devices connected in Internet has been growing exponentially in the past years and the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) plays a major role in enabling IoT paradigm while it is expected that in the near future billion of devices will be connected. Till now many vertical solutions in the M2M domain exist. To bridge this gap, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has defined SmartM2M a horizontal service layer that separates the communication part from the application domain and guaranteeing interoperability among different technologies.

Each device independently from the technology should register and post data to the service layer, which makes them available to applications in a seamless way. However the integration with very constrained devices like a IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN) based network is not straight forward. In this paper at first it is analyzed the problem of the hierarchical Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) in the SmartM2M standard specifications. Then, a new non hierarchical resource structure is proposed. Finally it is demonstrated that the new resource structure originates very short URIs, which can better suit to be used by constrained devices.

Zero-Outage Cellular Downlink With Fixed-Rate D2D Underlay

Two of the emerging trends in wireless cellular systems are device-to-device (D2D) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. D2D enables efficient reuse of the licensed spectrum to support localized transmissions, while M2M connections are often characterized by fixed and low transmission rates. D2D connections can be instrumental in localized aggregation of uplink M2M traffic to a more capable cellular device, before being finally delivered to the base station (BS). In this paper we show that a fixed M2M rate is an enabler of efficient machine-type D2D underlay operation taking place simultaneously with another downlink cellular transmission. In the considered scenario, aBS B transmits to a user U, while there are NM machine-type devices (MTDs) attached to U, all sending simultaneously to U and each using the same rate RM.

While assuming that B knows the channel B – U, but not the interfering channels from the MTDs to U, we prove that there is a positive downlink rate that can always be decoded by U, leading to zero-outage of the downlink signal. This is a rather surprising consequence of the features of the multiple access channel and the fixed rate RM. We also consider the case of a simpler, single-user decoder at U with successive interference cancellation. However, with single-user decoder, a positive zero-outage rate exists only when NM = 1 and is zero when NM > 1. This implies that joint decoding is instrumental in enabling fixed-rate underlay operation.

An IP-based triggering method for LTE MTC devices

In Release 11, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) introduced the ability for Service Capability Servers (SCS) / Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Servers to request that the Mobile Core Network (MCN) deliver a Short Message Service (SMS) device trigger to the User Equipment (UE). The ability to send a trigger avoids the need for the UE to maintain constant contact with the SCS via keep-alive messaging. Keep-alive messaging can be particularly wasteful when considering the nature of M2M Communications. The SMS based triggering solution requires that the UE support an application that listens on an SMS port for triggers.

In this paper, we propose an IP-Based trigger delivery method. The proposed triggering method allows a UE to receive a trigger by simply listening on a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) port. The solution also allows the UE to reply to the SCS with a small application specific response. We present the call flow for the new triggering method and the required enhancements to the 3GPP Machine-Type Communication Interworking Function (MTC-IWF). The paper concludes by presenting a demonstration platform that shows the IP-based trigger delivery method working with a commercially available Long Term Evolution (LTE) UE and a oneM2M compliantM2M Server.