A framework for power saving in IoT networks

An IoT / M2M system may support large number of battery operated devices in addition to some mains operated devices. It is important to conserve energy of these battery operated constrained devices. An IoT / M2M Gateway used in this system is an intermediate node between IoT / M2M devices and an IoT / M2M Service Platform. It enables distributed analytics and helps to reduce traffic load in the network. This gateway could be stationary or mobile. In an IoT / M2M system, it becomes important to conserve energy of this Gateway as well. This paper proposes a framework to reduce power consumption of M2M / IoT devices as well as Gateway nodes. We buffer data at IoT Application, IoT Gateways and Devices to keep devices and Gateway nodes in sleep mode as long as possible. We allow computation of the duration to buffer this data using factors such as QoS requirements, predicted pattern of future IoT / M2M messages and congestion indicators from different network nodes. This potentially also allows intelligent aggregation of IoT messages at the Gateway node. We also enhance signaling mechanisms and present software building blocks for this framework. Mesh as well as Cellular access technologies are considered here.