M2M RESOURCE PRESERVATION IN MOBILE NETWORKS

• US 20120213185A1
• Filed: 10/22/2010
• Published: 08/23/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Original Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Inventors: Frid, Lars
• Granted Patent: US 9,078,086 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/329
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/16 Implementation or adaptation of Internet protocol [IP], of transmission control protocol [TCP] or of user datagram protocol [UDP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/161 Implementation details of TCP/IP or UDP/IP stack architecture; Specification of modified or new header fields
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/70 Services for machine-to-machine communication [M2M] or machine type communication [MTC]

Abstract

The present invention relates to a solution for handling a plurality of machine to machine, M2M, devices in a wireless communication cell by providing a shared Internet Protocol, IP, address for the plurality of M2M devices and one of the M2M devices acts as a master device for attaching and receiving the shared IP address and other communication configuration control data from a wireless gateway. The M2M devices communicate with a central M2M server using datagrams with the shared IP address and device identity information together with data or control messages.

Claims

1. A method in a packet based wireless communication network for handling machine to machine, M2M, communication with an M2M application server via a communication network gateway, wherein a plurality of M2M terminal devices are located in communicative radio range to the communication network gateway, comprising the steps of:

allocating one M2M terminal device as master device

allocating the other M2M terminal devices as fellow devices, which together with the master terminal device forms an M2M system unity sharing one IP address;

providing in a packet datagram paysource and destination IP addresses, where one of source or destination IP address is the shared IP address;

providing M2M device identity in a payload field of the packet datagram such that the M2M device addressing is transparent to the network; and

listening in the fellow terminal devices to all radio communication traffic transmission related to the shared IP address and extracting the M2M device identity from datagrams related to the shared IP address.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising a step wherein the master device attaches to the network and acquires the shared IP address useable for all M2M devices part of the M2M system unity.

3. The method according to claim 1, further comprising steps of sending a datagram by multiplexing uplink datagrams from the M2M devices.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein multiplexing is performed by allowing each M2M device to transmit at any time.

5. A fellow terminal device for use in a wireless communication network, comprising at least one processor, at least one memory (1302), and at least one communication unit, wherein the processor is arranged to execute instructions sets stored in the memory for communicating, using a shared IP address and using the communication unit, with a network access gateway and wherein the fellow terminal device is further arranged to

exchange datagrams with the gateway where the datagrams are provided with source IP address, destination IP address, M2M device identity, where one of source or destination IP address is the shared IP address and the M2M device identity is provided in a payload field of the packet datagram such that the M2M device addressing is transparent to the network, and

listen to all radio communication traffic transmission related to the shared IP address and extract the M2M device identity from datagrams related to the shared IP address.