Machine-to-Machine Communication and Research Challenges: A Survey

In recent years, with the proliferation of machine-to-machine (M2M) applications into industries, M2M communications has attracted researchers in this prominent field of research. M2M communications has emerged to achieve ubiquitous communication among intelligent devices to monitor applications with little or no human intervention. The autonomous characteristics of M2M communications, which decrease the cost for human resource significantly, give impetus for the research of M2M communications in both industry and academic areas. This paper focuses on state-of-the-art M2M technologies, future challenges and envisioned opportunities. We have divided M2M communications into two categories, namely, capillary M2M and cellular M2M. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive study of M2M communications, including different categories and their challenges. This paper also investigates into the standards defined by the standardization organizations, such as IEEE, IETF, 3GPP for the multiplicity of M2M communications. At last, we analyze and discuss the key research challenges in M2M application designs.