M2M Communications: A Systems Approach

Chapter 4

M2M Requirements and High-Level Architectural Principles

Omar Elloumi and Franck Scholler

Alcatel-Lucent, Velizy, France

4.1 Introduction

The focus of this book is primarily on the horizontal enablers for M2M. In order to fully understand the motivation behind the work currently taking place in the different standards initiatives, as well as the most recent market developments, it is fundamental to become familiar with basic M2M requirements. Most standards organizations, including 3GPP, 3GPP2, and ETSI, have adopted a use-case-driven approach as a means with which to derive the set of requirements that further define the service architecture. ETSI, however, has adopted a more formal way of describing the use cases. In addition to the use-case-driven approach, it became very clear that all network optimization matters, both equipment features and the design or operational networks, also have to take into account fundamental characteristics of M2M-generated traffic and growth patterns. Both issues put forward new and particularly challenging requirements on the access and core network.

While this chapter focuses principally on M2M requirements for the services and network aspects, the aim is not to provide an exhaustive list of requirements which can be found in the different ETSI, 3GPP, and 3GPP2 standards. The objective is to show how these requirements are derived and what new constraints M2M imposes on the underlying systems. The requirements relating to the role of ...