Technical Committee (TC) Smart Machine-to-Machine Communications (SmartM2M) Activity Report 2023

Chair: Enrico Scarrone, Telecom Italia

Developing specifications for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) services and applications, including the Internet of Things (IoT). 

M2M (Machine-to-Machine) communications are the foundations for a fast-emerging world of smart devices, appliances, homes, cities and communities.

TC SmartM2M (Smart M2M Communications Technical Committee) is the main Technical Body supporting ETSI’s role in the oneM2M Partnership Project (onem2m.org). With much of its work focused on the IoT, the committee creates specifications and reports that enable users to build platforms allowing devices and services to be connected, regardless of the underlying technology used.

TC SmartM2M has primary responsibility to:

  • Provide specifications for M2M services and applications. Much of this work focuses on aspects of the Internet of Things (IoT), Smart Applications / Appliances and Smart Cities.
  • Support European policy and regulatory requirements including mandates in the area of M2M and the Internet of Things.
  • Identify EU policy and regulatory requirements on M2M services and applications to be developed by SmartM2M, and the conversion of oneM2M specifications into European Standards.

The committee’s work enables connected devices to exchange information through SAREF, ETSI’s Smart Applications REFerence ontology that runs with oneM2M‑compliant communication platforms. Providing building blocks that allow separation and recombination of different parts of the ontology depending on specific needs, SAREF specifies recurring core concepts in the smart applications domain and the relationships between them.

The wide scope of SmartM2M’s interests sees the committee interacting with the oneM2M PP as well as several ETSI Technical Bodies including ISG CIM, TC SmartBAN, TC eHEALTH, TC EMTEL, ISG CDM, ISG MEC and TC Cyber. It is also an active participant in relevant CEN/CENELEC/ETSI Coordination Groups on Smart Grids and Smart Manufacturing to support oneM2M, SAREF and IoT Semantic Interoperability.

In 2023, TC SmartM2M started to work on SAREF Time-Series, SAREF4GRID, Digital Twins based, SAREF EN 303 760, updated versions of SAREF extensions on (amongst other work items):

To support oneM2M, SAREF and IoT Semantic Interoperability, SmartM2M continued to participate in:

  • CEN/CENELEC/ETSI Coordination Group on Smart Grids (CG-SG) - M/490 and M/441
  • CEN/CENELEC/ETSI Coordination Group on Smart Manufacturing (not related to any EU Mandate)

During 2023 TC SmartM2M issued these publications:

  • Technical Report TR 103 904 V1.1.1 ‘SAREF extension investigation: Requirements for the Smart Grid domain’ – determines requirements for an initial semantic model for the Smart Grid domain, based on a set of use cases and from available existing data models.
  • Technical Report TR 103 844 V1.1.1 ‘Digital Twins and Standardization Opportunities in ETSI’ – presents an analysis of major characteristics and architectures, definition of use cases for industrial IoT, an identification major functionalities, and selection of candidate communication functionalities for standardization.
  • Technical Specification TS 103 840 V1.1.1 ‘Model for oneM2M Performance Evaluation’ – specifies procedures to assess the performance of oneM2M-based IoT platforms, including the identification and definition of KPIs necessary to assess the deployment.
  • Technical Report TR 103 839 V1.1.1 ‘Scenarios for evaluation of oneM2M deployments’ – identifies relevant deployment scenarios, including detailed information including IoT solution topology, characteristics of both IoT devices and applications in terms of number of entities, traffic profiles and targeted performances.
  • Technical Report TR 103 827 V1.1.1 ‘SAREF: Digital Twins opportunities for the Ontology Context’ - explores the relation between ontologies and Digital Twins, with a focus on aspects such as Digital Twin representation, reflection, context/situation detection, event representation, replication, composability and augmentation.
  • Technical Report TR 103 781 V1.1.1 ‘Study for SAREF ontology patterns and usage guidelines’ – discusses the modularization and factorization potential of the TC SmartM2M suite using reference ontology patterns.
  • Technical Specification TS 103 410-12 V1.1.1 ‘Extension to SAREF; Part 12: Smart Grid Domain’ – specifies an extension to SAREF to include a semantic model for the Smart Grid domain, based on use cases and data models identified in the corresponding ‘requirements’ Technical Report.
  • Technical Specification TS 103 410-1 V1.2.1 ‘Extension to SAREF; Part 1: Energy Domain’ – revises previously published extension, with inclusion of contribution from the H2020 InterConnect project.

Under the leadership of ETSI’s Centre for Testing and Interoperability (CTI), SmartM2M also continued its contribution to a set of standardized conformance test specifications (Test Suite Structure and Test Purposes and Abstract Test Suite) for oneM2M architecture and core protocols.

The official ETSI portal for SAREF gives user communities direct links to SAREF ontologies and related work items. See the latest SAREF core, extensions, specifications and documentation at saref.etsi.org. 

From 4-6 July 2023 TC SmartM2M (with oneM2M) organized the successful ETSI IoT Conference, providing the opportunity to promote awareness of SAREF among a broader community. 

See the full list of SmartM2M Work Items currently in development here.