Management in M2M networks

The vision of future networks usually depicts huge amount of different type of devices connected through heterogeneous networks. All those devices do not act alone, but many devices act together to achieve some goal. Although distributed processing is critical to achieve the mass deployment of systems for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication, centralized decision making and centralized management of billons of devices will become the key challenge for achieving the global mass market. Unlike management of traditional telecom network, M2M networks have some characteristics specific to M2M communication that need to be considered while designing efficient M2M network management. Examples of those characteristics would be networks including sleeping devices, low power lossy area networks, heterogeneous networks and device intelligence. Certain characteristics like mobility, time sensitivity of data and data volume differ from application to application but also need to be considered since they put requirements for efficient end to end management. The paper will focus on identifying the minimum requirements needed for M2M network management, propose mechanisms for efficient management in M2M networks as well as describe the relevant standardization activities for network management in M2M systems.