一個用於長期演進技術以降低WiFi/ZigBee機器設備電耗的機對機通訊閘道

Abstract

Machine to Machine (M2M) communication has gained much interest in the recent past, both within academia and across different industries. Power saving has become a priority issue recently due to accelerated growth of mobile and wireless devices with more and more processor power, more storage capacity, better display technology and much richer-applications. It assumes even greater significance when it comes to M2M devices since unlike hand-held mobile devices which have possibility to get re-charged after certain period of time, many of the M2M devices overall life is almost equal to its one-time charged battery life. This paper discusses a scalable M2M architecture and provides a power saving approach or design for hybrid network which can be extended to different technologies; thus not limited to LTE or WiFi/ZigBee. Solution details to enable low power consumption in M2M devices with WiFi and ZigBee interfaces are provided. The low power consumption in M2M devices are supported by LTE-M2M gateway, connected to the 3GPP network on one side while to the WiFi/ZigBee network of M2M devices on the other side. OPNET modeler is used for simulating the proposed network design and solution for the purposes of evaluation and analysis. Multiple simulations are performed and the results are recorded, both on the M2M gateway and on the M2M devices.

機器對機器(Machine-to-machine, M2M)通訊近來在學術界及多個工業領域中吸引了很多的關注。由於行動電話及無線設備更強的計算能力、更大的儲存空間、更好的顯示技術及更豐富的應用不斷加速成長，節能已然成為如今的重要議題。然而節能在M2M設備上更加重要，因為不像其他手持行動設備可以每過一段期間後就重新充電，許多M2M設備的生命週期就是其充電一次的待機時間。此論文中討論了一個具擴展性的M2M架構並提供了一個節能方法，或可說是節能混合網路設計，其可延伸到其他的技術上，不僅限應用於長期演進技術(Long Term Evolution, LTE)或WiFi/ZigBee技術。我們提供了可以使得擁有WiFi/ZigBee介面的M2M設備實現低功率消耗的解決方案細節；此M2M設備的低功耗是由LTE-M2M 閘道(Gateway)所支援的；此閘道一邊連接到3GPP網路，另一邊則連接到與M2M設備相連的WiFi/ZigBee網路。我們使用了OPNET Modeler軟體來模擬所提出的網路設計及解決方案用以評估及分析，我們實作了數個模擬情境並記錄關於閘道及M2M設備的數據結果。