Extensions to LwM2M for Intermittent Connectivity and Improved Efficiency

Abstract

In order to extend the Internet technologies into constrained networks, there have been several research efforts and innovations over the past few years. These efforts resulted in several networking standards and protocols which have led to the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT). Within this enormous ecosystem of protocols, the Lightweight Machine-to-Machine (LwM2M), a standard for device and service management, is a very promising candidate to achieve global interoperability, especially when constrained devices are involved. In this paper, we propose extensions to the LwM2M in order to improve communication efficiency and introduce Intermittent Connectivity, which will improve support for Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) in LwM2M. For this purpose, we introduce two new object models, namely, Notify and Batch. The Notify Object enables the creation of reverse interaction models and Ready-to-Receive (RTR) functionality, which allows LwM2M clients to send periodic updates of resources without any need for a request and to notify LwM2M servers that it is ready to receive downlink messages and to keep the network connectivity open if it is necessary for downlink communication. Finally, the Batch object allows LwM2M servers to perform actions on multiple resources in a device via a single request.