M2M is often seen as an evolution of telemetry as it allows the remote measurement and reporting of information to a central location. The objective is to allow machines to interact with a company information system or an organization, without human intervention. The breadth of applications is wide and nearly unlimited!

The technologies used for M2M are the same as those typically used for wireless communications. While the cellular network and the Internet are preferred for long-range communications, Bluetooth , wi-fi and RFID are typically used for short to medium-range. Some of these existing technologies have been upgraded for industrial needs and new technologies such as Wavenis or Zigbee have also emerged to meet the requirements of certain M2M applications.

The most widespread use of M2M is still in the Transport & Logistics industry, where M2M is harnessed to enable route optimization and product traceability within the logistics chain. M2M is also used to improve the real-time scheduling and optimization of on-site technician repair and maintenance work, using fleet-management solutions.

But increasingly we’re seeing M2M solutions moving into other verticals.

Recent pilot projects reveal that M2M is also gaining traction in a number of new vertical sectors such as Health Care, where M2M allows remote patient monitoring, including emergency-response services in case the system detects problems. An example in case here is the Columbia Bracelet for Alzheimer Patients. The bracelet, equipped with GSM/GPS allows for geo-localization of an Alzheimer patient who wanders off or becomes disoriented. This solution meets the challenge of providing Alzheimer patients with a safe and secure environment without curtailing their freedom of movement.

In Energy & Utility, we see a strong demand for “smart readers” that allow for remote meter reading, increasingly creating real-time insights into the usage of water and electricity in factories or in our homes. An example of a successful application in this sector is the development of a supervisory control and data acquisition system for the Bangalore Electric Supply Company (BESCOM) to monitor and control the power distribution network. After experiencing energy losses of up to 40% on its network, BESCOM now has the ability to collect, store and analyze data to simulate power operation and prevent outages and faults before they occur, thereby reducing revenue loss and increasing customer satisfaction.

Another illustration is the development of a residential heat management system in Finland involving a heating regulator that can be remotely controlled by mobile phone: settings can be adjusted, measurement data can be read and alarms can be received. With this new technology in hand, customers can, for instance, turn on the heating remotely with their phone so that they can come home to a house at the right temperature.

Retail is an obvious candidate. M2M solutions based on RFID (radio frequency identification) tags are replacing handheld barcode scanning solutions, in order to provide retailers with real-time visibility into their inventory. These RFID tags contain a computer chip, which allows them to store data, such as origin, content and shipper, and a minuscule antenna that lets the chip communicate this information via a wireless network. Combine this capability with global positioning system (GPS) and companies have increased abilities to track and trace goods around the globe. As a result, store managers can see automatically which items are stocked, which ones they need to order, and how effectively certain items are selling.

Insurance companies have been looking at M2M with particular interest to be able to offer new innovative and competitive solutions. Norwich Union’s “Pay as Your Drive” car insurance, whereby a smart modem installed in customers’ car tracks every journey, is an excellent example of how M2M offers advantages to end-customers by providing cheaper premiums for people who avoid driving at high risk times like rush hour and late at night.

Despite successful case studies around, however, the reality is that any M2M solution still requires significant integration work. The M2M market is highly fragmented and M2M offerings are often complex as clients have to collaborate with numerous providers to get solutions that meet their requirements.

In order to counter this industry fragmentation, some industry players are developing fully integrated ”Platform-as-a-Service” solutions, like Orange’s M2M Planet, thereby greatly simplifying the M2M solution building process.

With these exciting developments, we are already finding that indeed machines can talk!

This blog is an abbreviated version of an article that I co-wrote for Hong Kong Echo (Focus upon Innovation & Technology, which was published in Summer 2009.

Graham Wilde and Ross Parsons from UK-based BWCS Consultancy have expanded their hugely successful annual Mobility@Rail summer conference in London with a new autumn-edition, focusing upon rail communications regulation and management.

Admittedly the first in a series of many to come, the speakers at this introductory event focused mainly upon Europe’s regulatory success in dealing with interstate rail-communications, a system also known as “GSM-R” (”R” stands for “rail”).

Orchestrated by the European Union, supported by large vendor-consortia (the likes of Nokia-Siemens and Nortel), and now implemented by the majority of European rail-operators, the GSM-R system has proven to support critical “below-the-rail” secure voice communication systems at Europe’s densely interstate rail network.

However, despite its major success, the various presentations from both train- and rail-operators clearly indicated the need to further expand the GSM-R system to increase its capacity for wireless data-communications, to increase security on the trains and the trackside as well as to support a range of operational and maintenance (remote-diagnosis) applications.

Train operators certainly know what they’re talking about, as over the last 6 years quite a number of train-operators across Europe have build ‘connected train’ networks to support applications like real-time internet-browsing, but increasingly also to support real-time video-surveillance systems.

And in a world where public rail transport is widely and increasingly being adopted as a “green” solution against CO2 pollution from alternative (car- and plane) modes of transportation, this need for a ‘connected rail’ solution is as real as its gets.

Unfortunately, GSM-R finds itself here a victim of its own success. By having adopted designated radio-spectrum in the popular GSM-band to support secure rail-comms, by definition GSM-R is unable to expand into more high-bandwidth applications. And although GSM-R can be upgraded to include some data-capability, basically we’re talking here about ‘SMS’-type data capabilities.

Unfortunately the GSM-R vendors are unable to provide any solace (yet). Stuck between their commercial interests to resell the GSM-R solution outside Europe’s borders (especially eyeing the booming Asian rail-market), and the inherent bandwidth limitations that the GSM-R frequencies offer, their proposed solution is as straightforward as it is profitable: Why not invest several tens of billions of euro’s in building new separate physical communication networks along the tracks to support the various high-bandwidth needs of “below” and “above” the rail applications?

The reality of today’s train-operations, especially in Europe, is summed up by two words: corporatization and privatization. And to give the vendors, no matter how organized their consortia and sophisticated their marketing, a new carte blanche to spend billions of euro’s on an additional wireless track networks, might not be in the best of Europeans tax-payers interest…

As an industry outsider focusing upon wireless innovation, I myself would have expected the GSM-R vendors to come up with a more integrated communication roadmap themselves, up-selling new advanced solutions to its already established GSM-R customer base. However it seems they are not under a lot of pressure to do so.

Norman Frisch from Nortel, faced these challenges in his presentation. He pointed out that although Nortel is moving towards IP-enabling the GSM-R solution, the European Railway Association only expects that by 2017 (!) the vendors should be able to replace the current circuit-switched GSM-R technology with a packed-switched GSM-R solution (supporting IP-packets). Mind you, spending ten years improving a limited wireless rail solution amounts to several generations of investing in new improved next generation wireless rail technologies! He rightly mentioned that as the current GSM-R solution is only halfway being deployed across Europe, it would not make commercial sense to point out upgraded or even alternative solutions…

What is clear is that when it comes to the future of rail-comms, “Europe” has adopted the evolutionary track.

Interestingly enough, two speakers from the USA provided more ‘revolutionary’ directions. Faced with stringent public transport budgets, very mature wireless technology industry, and a severe fragmented industry, several trials offer an indication of how the various rail-operator needs can be integrated into a cost-effective common wireless architecture solution, using more advanced wireless technologies, focusing more upon IP-standards.

Steven Rayment, CTO from BelAir Networks, a WiFi-mesh-vendor, presented a highly interesting case study of a USA-based public transit system operator where its patented wifi-mesh technology has been used to support a train-operators need for public access, public safety and train operations. Unfortunately the train-operator itself was not present to share its experiences.

Source: BelAir Networks.

Already in 2004 I was involved in the design and build of a similar wifi@rail project for ProRail in the Netherlands, where we obtained similar promising results using WiFi-technologies. However, WiFi by its indoor-design was never intended to be used in real outdoor solutions. And although the wifi-mesh solution has benefits for covering wireless cities, the question is whether it is suitable to the more line-of-sight nature of railway-tracks. The industry has spend a lot of money in the design of a more promising wireless backhaul technology, WiMaX, with several train trials and implementations over the last years pointing out to a promising start. The rail industry is particularly looking at the high-bandwidth unlicensed backhaul (802.16d) version of WiMaX.

It is here that Jim Allison from Capital Corridor (San Francisco Bay-area) gave an insightful and realistic analysis of what is required to launch a future-proof integrated wireless broadband solution for train operators. Having trialed various wireless technologies over the last 3 years, he pointedly described the challenges from a rail-operator point of view, who does not own the tracks. In his “Who Owns The Radio Trackside Spectrum?”-presentation, he focused upon how to provide a combination of passenger, operational and security applications, using WiMaX (802.16d) technologies.

Source: Jim Allison, CCJPA.

Jim stressed the need for what he called a ‘best of both worlds’ solution, where open-standard high-bandwidth commercial vendor-solutions are combined with a specific designated “safety” frequency by the regulator (in case the 4.9GHz), similar to GSM-R situation in Europe. It is this ‘best of both worlds’ approach that I call the “WiMaX-R” solution for the future of rail-comms systems, not just in the USA, but in a global context.

In my presentation I’ve shared with the audience some experiences with recent ‘connected train’ assignments that my company has been involved in at the AsiaPac region. I’ve highlighted an assignment that was just completed for an Australian Rail-Operator/Department of Transport, where an analysis was done between the bandwidth needs of a train operator vis-à-vis the available bandwidth offered by the various technology solutions. As the train-operator was operating an obsolete analogue communications (‘trunking’) system, the potential of a ‘leapfrog’ into the IP-world was stressed by its visionary CEO.

The analysis clearly shows that especially in countries with limited cabling infrastructure and limited terrestrial (cellular) networks like Australia (but also China and India!) the potential of unlicensed high-bandwidth wireless backhaul to support the various needs of rail- and track-operators is most promising.

Now, how to turn this vision into a reality?

A good first step would be for the national/state regulatory offices to examine current and future rail-and track operators needs vis-à-vis existing/emerging technologies, and start an industry-discussion to obtain guidelines and provide funding for selected projects. OFCOM, the UK-regulator office, fortunately has kicked-off a similar initiative, and one of its leading researchers, John Parker, presented the findings during the conference. The results of the study can be downloaded here.

Although the conference did not address all of the issues raised, we cannot give credit enough to the guys from BWCS in bringing together such an excellent delegation of the rail-industry in confronting these issues.