Energy Efficient IP-Connectivity with IEEE 802.11 for Home M2M Networks

Machine-to-machine communication (M2M) technology enables large-scale device communication and networking, including home devices and appliances. A critical issue for home M2M networks is how to efficiently integrate existing home consumer devices and appliances into an IP-based wireless M2M network with least modifications. Due to its popularity and widespread use in closed spaces, Wi-Fi is a good alternative as a wireless technology to enable M2M networking for home devices. This paper addresses the energy-efficient integration of home appliances into a Wi-Fiand IP-based home M2M network. Toward this goal, we first propose an integration architecture that requires least modifications to existing components. Then, we propose a novel long-term sleep scheduling algorithm to be applied with the existing 802.11 power save mode. The proposed scheme utilizes the multicast DNS protocol to maintain device and service availability when devices go into deep sleep mode. We prototyped our proposed architecture and algorithm to build a M2M network testbed of home appliances. We performed various experiments on this testbed to evaluate the operation and energy savings of our proposal. We also did simulation experiments for larger scale scenarios. As a result of our test-bed and simulation experiments, we observed significant energy savings compared to alternatives while also ensuring device and service availability.