Friday, December 13, 2013

Advancements in Congestion control technology for M2M


NTT Docomo recently published a new article (embedded below) on congestion control approaches for M2M. In their own words:

Since 3GPP Release 10 (Rel. 10) in 2010, there has been active study of technical specifications to develop M2M communications further, and NTT DOCOMO has been contributing proactively to creating these technical specifications. In this article, we describe two of the most significant functions standardized between 3GPP Rel. 10 and Rel. 11: the M2M Core network communications infrastructure, which enables M2M service operators to introduce solutions more easily, and congestion handling technologies, which improve reliability on networks accommodating a large number of terminals.

Complete article as follows:



Other related posts:

Monday, December 9, 2013

Rise of the "Thing"

Light Reading carried an interesting cartoon on how M2M works. I wouldnt be surprised if some of the M2M applications at present do work like this. Jokes apart, last week the UK operator EE did a very interesting presentation on Scaling the network for the Rise of the Thing.

A question often asked is "What is the difference between the 'Internet of Things' (IoT) and 'Machine to Machine' (M2M)?". This can generate big discussions and can be a lecture on its own. Quora has a discussion on the same topic here. The picture above from the EE presentation is a good way of showing that M2M is a subset of IoT. 

Its also interesting to note how these 'things' will affect the signalling. I often come across people who tell me that since most M2M devices just use small amounts of data transfer, why is there a need to move from GPRS to LTE. The 2G and 3G networks were designed primarily for Voice with Data secondary function. These networks may work well now but what happens when the predicted 50 Billion connected devices are here by 2020 (or 500 Billion by 2030). The current networks would drown in the control signalling that would often result in congested networks. Congestion control is just one of the things 3GPP is working on for M2M type devices as blogged earlier here. In fact the Qualcomm presentation blogged about before does a decent job of comparing various technologies for IoT, see here.

The EE presentation is embedded as follows:



Another good example website I was recently made aware of is http://postscapes.com/internet-of-things-examples/ - worth checking how IoT would help us in the future.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Quick summary on LTE and UMTS / HSPA Release-12 evolution by 3GPP



A quick summary from 3GPP about the Release-12 progress (Jun. 2014 release planned) from the recent ETSI Future Mobile Summit. Presentation and video embedded below