Roland Hechwartner summarizes the latest developments from oneM2M’s recent Technical Plenary #57 in this interview. In addition to representing Deutsche Telekom (DT), Roland is the Chairman for oneM2M’s Technical Plenary (TP) and responsible for the coordination of the overall management of the technical work within the TP and its Working Groups.
Q: Let us begin with a summary of this TP?
RH: We organized TP57 as a hybrid meeting in Korea. oneM2M’s partner, the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA), kindly hosted us at their Global IoT Certification Centre in Pangyo, Seoul.
For many reasons, this was a very successful meeting; Firstly, the participation of delegates, both in person and remotely connected, rose again. Secondly, we achieved a major milestone with the ratification of Release 4. This means we have an agreed set of Release 4 documents for oneM2M’s regional standardization partners to publish on their sites. This is quite an achievement when you consider that oneM2M Release 4 comprises 23 technical specifications and 7 technical reports. It introduces new features like semantic reasoning, time management, enhanced support of Fog/Edge Computing by enabling software campaigning and resource synchronization, enhanced 3GPP interworking, public warning service enablement, and security enhancements across multiple domains.
Thirdly, we made good progress on new topics for Release 5. Fourthly, these was progress on collaborations with other standard organizations and the wider industry community. For instance, we opened a discussion on the Metaverse IoT work to non-oneM2M members. We also announced plans for a joint whitepaper with ETSI’s multi-access edge computing (MEC) industry specification group. We also responded to an information request from the Global Certification Forum on the topic of Release 2 certification.
TP 57 coincided with a couple of important user and marketing events. The week began with an invitation to TP 57 attendees from the European and Korean organizers to the awards ceremony for an international oneM2M hackathon. Later in the week, we announced the winners of oneM2M’s Technical Excellence awards and participated in a two-part, hybrid conference on market adoption, implementation, and certification aspects of oneM2M.
Q: What were the highlights for the core activities of each of oneM2M’s working groups?
RH: Let us begin with the Requirements & Domain Models (RDM) working Group which completed TR-0061 and TR-0062. Both Documents received TP approval and ratification for inclusion in Release 4. The Technical Report (TR-0061) is a “Study on ontologies for Smart City Services”. This TR studies ontologies for services in a Smart City. Smart cities are represented by a diverse landscape of functions and frameworks, which are implemented at large scales and support numerous ICT functions. To support various services via oneM2M Smart City platforms, the development of ontologies for service domains in the Smart City is an essential work of oneM2M.
The Technical Report (TR-0062) defines the “oneM2M System Enhancement to Support Privacy Data Protection Regulations”. It describes the state-of-the-art privacy related regulations and their features. The TR also contains a gap analysis to find out what features are supported and not supported by the current oneM2M system. The results of the technical report will help us to identify possible enhancement features to support data protection regulations which the next oneM2M release(s) could support.
As part of the Release 5 activities, we made progress on the Technical Report (TR-0068) “AI enablement to oneM2M”. This report presents an analysis of existing AI/ML technologies that can be included as resources in the oneM2M architecture. The document includes an investigation of potential AI/ML service use cases that use data collected in the oneM2M system. A further analysis of this information helps us to understand what required features are supported or not supported by the oneM2M system. This will lead us to identify potential requirements and key features to enable AI/ML in the oneM2M system.
Q: Are you following the same process for oneM2M’s Metaverse IoT initiative?
RH: Yes, that is correct. In fact, to address broader interests, we organized a workshop that was open to interested parties on the topic. We also agreed a baseline for the metaverse IoT study which is the TR-0069.
We held the workshop on the topic of “Enablement of IoT in the metaverse” on 29th November. Shane He, Nokia, Chair of the RDM WG and Andrew Han, Hansung University Char of the TDE WG co-lead this work item (WI) and they moderated the discussion. There were three objectives. One was to discuss the scope and definition of the Metaverse and Metaverse IoT. The second was to identify links between Metaverse and IoT, while the third objective was to discuss related use cases and scenarios, as well as to improve interoperability with other paradigms.
The discussion centred on a set of leading questions: What is “Metaverse-IoT”? What is the key service/technology of Metaverse-IoT? How do we handle the Metaverse services in the oneM2M world? The workshop was the starting point for a series of such open events, and we invite other interested parties to join in further discussions to define the scope and terminology of the work.
Q: Let us return to the other working groups. What developments occurred there?
RH: The System Design & Security (SDS) working group focused its efforts on finalizing the Release 4 specifications of which 11 new baselines were agreed. These include new Release 4 versions for TS-0001 Functional Architecture, TS-0004 Service Layer Core Protocol Specification, TS-0022 Field Device Configuration, TS-0010 MQTT Protocol Binding, TS-0020 WebSocket Protocol Binding, and TS-0030 Ontology Based Interworking.
There was progress in the Testing & Developers Ecosystem (TDE) working group to develop a workflow for handling contributions in line with best practices for the developer community. Members agreed on changes to enhance the TS-0018 specification for Test Suite Structure & Test Purposes and the TS-0019 specification on Abstract Test Suite & Implementation eXtra information for Test.
Earlier on, I mentioned an information request from GCF about the oneM2M Certification Program. In our liaison statement to the GCF, we confirmed that oneM2M releases are designed to include the functionality of the previous releases. In other words, the Releases are backward compatible. However, the oneM2M test specifications are specific to a single release and require the use of suitable configurations for test and certification purposes.
Drawing on experience with developer outreach and hackathon activities, members of the TDE discussed ideas for oneM2M to improve its Developer Outreach activities. One avenue will be to increase engagement and collaboration with universities.
Q: Who were the recipients of oneM2M’s Technically Excellence awards this year?
RH: The oneM2M Technical Excellence Award is presented to delegates “in appreciation and recognition of their outstanding technical contributions to oneM2M specifications showing the highest standard of excellence, innovation and quality.”
During the mid-week plenary of the TP57, it was my pleasure to announce the winners of the oneM2M Technical Excellence Awards and to celebrate their achievements with attendees in person.
- Members recognized Dale Seed of Convida Wireless for his many outstanding technical contributions and representation of oneM2M at industry events for several years and, last but not least, his leading role to develop and publish the Sustainability whitepapers.
- Cyrille Bareau of Orange received his award for outstanding contributions to the interworking proxy entity (IPE) based device management capability and his continued commitment to clarify the existing device management specifications.
- Interoperability testing is a critical part of standardization and solution hardening. Keebum Kim of TTA received his award for his continued contribution to and support of oneM2M’s interoperability testing and his leading role in establishing and supporting the oneM2M certification program.
- Ken Figueredo of More-with-Mobile received his award for constantly bringing oneM2M's achievement in IoT technology to the public eye and for making complex technical issues approachable and easy to understand for the non-technical public.
- Finally, Andreas Kraft of Deutsche Telekom received his award for his consistent efforts bringing in technical contributions and development of educational resources that developers can use to learn about and conduct hands-on experiments with an IoT platform based on oneM2M’s core capabilities.
Q: As we approach the year end, what comes next on the oneM2M agenda?
RH: There is an important event immediately after TP 57. Once again, TTA will host oneM2M’s 8th Interoperability Event. This is co-organized by TTA and ETSI over the period from 5 to 7 December 2022, at TTA’s Global Testing & Certification Center in Pangyo, Korea.
In scope of the interoperability testing are Release 2, 3 and 4 based on TS-0001 & TS-0004 & Bindings baselines from TP#56. Interoperability testing over HTTP/CoAP/MQTT/WebSocket. There will also be a set of conformance testing sessions running in parallel with the Interoperability testing sessions.
We have spoken in the past about interoperability testing. It allows vendors to test their implementations in a well-structured and neutral environment. In addition to learning about implementation details, the process feeds useful information back to oneM2M and helps us to resolve ambiguities or lack of clarity in how the specifications are written.
From an administrative angle, we are accepting nominations for a few vacant positions. These are for two TP Vice Chairs, two Vice Chairs for the RDM WG and one vice chair for the TDE WG. The election will take place at TP58 which will be held as hybrid meeting from 20-24 February 2023 in New Delhi, India. Our host for the event is TSDSI and the TP will receive support from the EU-funded India-EU project on ICT standardisation.
