Machine-to-Machine Communication Architecture as an Enabling Paradigm of Embedded Internet Evolution

In addition to human-to-human (H2H) and machine-to-human (M2H) communications, an emerging technology enabling full mechanical automation that may change living styles is being developed. Communications among machine-type devices are known as machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. Current market penetration and recent predictions confirm that M2M system deployments are increasing exponentially. This is driven by the needs of industries to automate their real-time monitoring and control processes as well as the increasing popularity of smart applications to improve the living style. Owing to low power, cost efficiency and low human intervention, M2M communication has become a huge force for a number of wide variety of real-time applications such as environmental monitoring, smart grid, remote healthcare, building automation, etc. This work represents comprehensive survey on M2M communication architecture and considers some open research issues and challenges in reliability and security domains. Key-Words: IoT, M2M communications, reliability, security, smart grid, wireless networks.