July 2024 - In this interview, Roland Hechwartner summarizes the latest developments from oneM2M’s 65th Technical Plenary. In addition to chairing oneM2M’s Technical Plenary (TP), Roland is responsible for the coordination of the overall management of the technical work within the TP and its Working Groups (WGs). He is also a representative of Deutsche Telekom (DT).
Q: Would you begin with an overview of the key developments at TP#65?
RH: We held TP65 as an on-line event over the week of 24 to 28 June 2024. There were two significant developments in addition to the usual Working Group (WG) activities. The first relates to Edge deployment scenarios which are a growing feature of the IoT landscape. The second development was an event report about the recent 36th Asia-Pacific Telecommunity Standardization Program (ASTAP) forum which featured several presentations on different aspects of oneM2M.
Q: What does oneM2M have planned in relation to Edge deployments?
RH: By way of background, oneM2M members have been working to propose a new work item with the aim of developing an interworking capability between the oneM2M Service Layer and the ETSI ISG Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) specification. A joint whitepaper by ETSI ISG MEC and oneM2M considers several deployment and technical aspects and concludes with a discussion of different deployment options. The whitepaper stems from a collaborative effort across 3GPP and oneM2M communities to bring together mobile communications and IoT disciplines.
Through follow-on discussions from TP64, members approved the work item WI-0129 on Edge Deployment using MEC. The aim of the WI is to develop a new TR investigating oneM2M and MEC integration scenarios and mechanisms that should eventually lead to a technical specification (TS) defining the oneM2M and MEC interworking. This TR will contain various aspects to investigate the deployment scenarios and derive viable technical solutions. For instance, based on performance evaluations of various deployment options. The scope of work also includes a Developer Guide on how to deploy oneM2M and MEC. Finalization of the work is planned in 2026.
Q: For readers that have not seen coverage of ASTAP on oneM2M.org, what were the highlights from the TP65 presentation?
RH: There was a summary briefing from SeungMyeong Jeong (KETI) about the ASTAP 36 meeting. Several oneM2M experts presented in a special workshop dedicated to oneM2M workshop. This took place in hybrid mode by the EG-IoT (Experts Group - IoT) of ASTAP 36 meeting. From oneM2M, Roland Hechwartner, SeungMyeong Jeong, Sushil Kumar and Yoo Rhee Jin attended the workshop and presented different technical and user-adoption perspectives about oneM2M.
ASTAP is an appropriate platform to promote oneM2M as it caters to APAC countries. In his presentation to ASTAP, SeungMyeong suggested holding oneM2M TP and tutorial sessions/Industry Day workshops in APAC countries next year. SeungMyeong will be connecting with ASTAP delegates after the TP to have discussion on promoting oneM2M.
Q: Let us now turn to the Working Group activities at TP65. What were the main developments for each WG?
RH: Beginning with the Requirements & Domain Models (RDM) working group, which was chaired by Massimo Vanetti (SBS), there was further progress on Release 5. This included notable progress on TS‑0034 about oneM2M Semantics Support, TS‑0023 on SDT based Information Model & Mapping for Vertical Industries, TS‑0002 on Requirements as well as the TR‑0069 on Metaverse IoT.
There was also a joint discussion with the TDE WG on document RDM-2024-0024-tinyML_using_oneM2M. tiny ML is a non-profit organization that focuses on low power machine earning and AI at the edge of the cloud. In February 2023, tinyML Foundation Deployment Working Group published a white paper describing the architecture of a tiny ML deployment. Building on this, JaeSeung Song (Sejong University) made a proposal to develop a developers guide using both existing and new features of oneM2M. The goal is to demonstrate how the use of oneM2M will greatly assist ML data scientists and ML based deployments. As part of this initiative, the RDM WG should also identify new features for oneM2M that can make the process easier for ML practitioners. Example areas include applications related to federated learning and the capture of drift data among other possibilities.
Q: And what developments were there from the other two working groups?
RH: Peter Niblett (IBM) chaired the System Design & Security (SDS) working group. During their sessions, members agreed on new input for the following documents: TS‑0001 Functional Architecture, TS‑0004 Service Layer Core Protocol, TS‑0022 Field Device configuration. Additionally, work began on the Release 5 version of TS‑0008 CoAP Protocol Binding.
In the case of TS-0020 on WebSocket Protocol Binding, this specification document is now converted and follows the Markdown process I described from TP64.
Work has progressed on TR-0076 on Integrating NGSI-LD API in oneM2M and work on TR-0063 Effective IoT communication has restarted.
Finally, Bob Flynn (Exacta) chaired the Testing & Developers Ecosystem (TDE) WG. There was a presentation in one of the TDE sessions on a oneM2M device simulator by the ETSI Testing Task Force (TTF) 019. Testing Task Forces are teams established to support the ETSI Technical Organization, to accelerate the production of testing and methodology standards. The oneM2M device simulator is available on the oneM2M Gitlab. Every simulated sensor (e.g., Temperature, Luminosity, Humidity, Power, Presence, etc.) will push data periodically to a oneM2M platform following a configuration file. It is possible to change the status of every simulated actuator (e.g., Lamp, Buzzer, etc.) using the "update" button. The new status is published immediately to the oneM2M platfom.
There was also a discussion of the next Interoperability testing event. The plan is to schedule it so that it can be collocated with TP66 in Sophia Antipolis during September. The scope will encompass the following topics: Protocol Bindings, Security, CSE to CSE Registration. Additionally, members also discussed the possibility of holding an international Interoperability event co-located with a TP meeting in Asia in 2025.
There will be a oneM2M International Hackathon organized by KETI, and to be held in autumn 2024. Further update will be provided via the oneM2M online media in due course.
Q: In closing, what are the plans for the coming TPs?
RH: Our next Technical Plenary, TP66, will be organized as a hybrid meeting hosted by ETSI in Sophia Antipolis, France. The scheduled dates are September 9-13, 2024.
