IoT/M2M from research to standards: the next steps (Part I) [Guest Editorial]

As the pace of IoT deployments accelerate, IoT standards are undergoing major evolutions, sometimes revolutions. For instance, cellular networks standards are now adding techniques to improve network performance to address traffic patterns generated by an increasing number of IoT devices. Ongoing discussions around 5G requirements may become game changing for M2M communications because the standard will be designed, from the ground-up, for massive scale IoT deployments. This is a radical shift compared to the “quick-fixes” 3GPP and 3GPP2 have been adding to 2G/3G and 4G standards so far. Another example of this radical shift is related to IoT service platforms (such as the platform standardized by oneM2M) and IoT applications. Semantic interoperability is now emerging as a major trend that allows data exchange between applications, an increased level of interoperability, analytics, and reasoning. With ontologies engineering, researchers will soon overcome the limitations of static data models and bridge the gap between the currently deployed vertical silos. Other areas that will see intense standardization activity are IoT security and low power wide area connectivity.