Energy efficient ip-connectivity with ieee 80211 for home m2m networks

Abstract

Machine-to-machine communications (M2M) technology enables large-scale communication and networking of devices of various kinds including home devices and appliances. A critical issue for home M2M networks is how to efficiently integrate the already existing home consumer devices and appliances into an IP based wireless M2M network with least modifications to existing components. Due to its popularity and widespread usage in closed spaces, Wi-Fi is a good alternative as a wireless technology to enable M2M networking for home devices. This thesis addresses the energy-efficient integration of home appliances to a Wi-Fi and IP based home M2M network. Towards this goal, we first propose an integration architecture that requires least modifications in existing components. Then, we propose a novel long-term sleep scheduling algorithm to be applied together with the existing 802.11 power save mode (PSM). The proposed scheme utilizes the multicast DNS (mDNS) protocol to maintain device and service availability when devices go into deep sleep mode. We implemented our proposed architecture and algorithm as a prototype to build an M2M network of home appliances as a test-bed. We performed various experiments on this test-bed to evaluate the proper operation and energy savings of our proposal. We also did extensive simulation experiments for larger-scale scenarios. As a result of our test-bed and simulation experiments, we observed energy savings up to 70% compared to the existing infrastructure which applies no sleep mechanism, and up to 20% compared to standard 802.11 PSM scheme, while ensuring device and service availability at the same time.