IoT standards for M2M communications

The potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) has been advanced with the publication of a new set of specifications (Release 2) by oneM2M, the global standards initiative for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications and the IoT.

Based on contributions from more than 200 member companies, Release 2 opens up the IoT ecosystem to devices that lack the protocol and enable interworking among systems using AllSeen Alliance’s AllJoyn, Open Connectivity Foundation’s OIC and the Open Mobile Alliance’s Lightweight M2M (LWM2M). As a result, the number of devices that can seamlessly connect with one other in the IoT ecosystem, estimated by Cisco to number 50 billion by 2020, is greatly expanded.

Security has also been addressed, by enabling end-to-end secure information exchange between any devices or servers, as well as implementing attribute and role-based dynamic access control, which allows the complexity of handling access control policies in consumer-oriented IoT scenarios and enables granting of temporary authorisation to devices during operation. Meanwhile, semantic interoperability enables meaningful data exchange for secure distribution and re-use.

“As IoT devices continue to saturate society, standardisation is key to achieving universally accepted specifications and protocols for true interoperability between IoT devices and applications,” said Dr Omar Elloumi, chair of the oneM2M Technical Plenary (Nokia corporate CTO group).

oneM2M’s Release 2 coincides with IoT announcements from John Deere, a farm equipment manufacturer, and Certuss Dampfautomaten, a German maker of steam generators used for processes ranging from cooking sausages to sterilising medical instruments. Their recent announcements discuss the enablement of home and industrial domain deployment — another key feature of Release 2 which allows information from various industries’ applications to exchange data.

In addition to the published specifications, application developers also have access to user-friendly APIs and guidelines, complementing the global set of IoT standards for this group of stakeholders, and further facilitating access to the official source of global, IoT-application identifiers that comply with the oneM2M standard, the oneM2M App-ID registry.