M2M Communications: A Systems Approach

Chapter 9

M2M Terminals and Modules

Gustav Vos

Sierra Wireless, British Columbia, Canada

This chapter focuses on M2M modules, their characteristics and the services they provide. However, before discussing these topics, it is important to provide a clear definition of the M2M module. An M2M module differs from an M2M terminal, insofar as an M2M terminal can be broken down into two logical components. The first is the application portion of the terminal that provides the specific hardware and software for the M2M application. For example, in a point of sales terminal, the application portion would be the keypad, LCD, and printer with the associated application layer software. The second logical component of the M2M terminal is the M2M module, which is mainly responsible for providing the connectivity services. The application portion is also sometimes simply referred to as the “host” to the M2M module. The application portion of the terminal is highly related to the M2M application, a subject that will be comprehensively covered in the second book in this series The Internet of Things: Key Applications and Protocols. Although M2M modules exist in wired and wireless variants (to be developed later in this chapter), more focus will be given to wireless M2M modules in this chapter, since the majority of deployed M2M modules use wireless networks.

9.1 M2M Module Categorization

With the highly diverse nature of problems that M2M applications resolve, it is no wonder that there is an ...