“oneM2M organized two knowledge-sharing sessions for the IEEE’s 10th World Forum on IoT to raise awareness of IoT and data standardization”.

 

December 2024 - In this interview, Roland Hechwartner summarizes the latest developments from oneM2M’s 67th 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#67?

RH: We co-located the TP#67 activities with the IEEE’s 10th World Forum on the Internet of Things in Ottawa, Canada from November 10 ‑ 15. We also made provisions for remote participation to help those unable to travel. The IEEE World Forum was scheduled from Nov 10 to 13 and its program included two Industry Forums that were scheduled under lead of oneM2M with the aim of sharing information about global IoT standardization, oneM2M and deployment experiences.

The second Industry Forum was broader in scope and focused on the data standards landscape. This is an important topic on the standardization roadmap because of enterprise and industrial application opportunities as well as the growing recognition to feed decision making systems with data of a high quality.

Following the IEEE event, we dedicated the latter part of the week to our usual TP activities. Aside from our regular Working Group activities, we also went through the results of our election process for Chair and Vice‑Chair positions.

Q: How did oneM2M go about introducing oneM2M in the first IEEE Industry Forum?

RH: oneM2M is the oldest formal standardization body for IoT systems so there is a lot to cover when you reflect on the standardization roadmap and functional scope going back to our origins in 2012. The industry forum titled "oneM2M Global IoT Standards and Its Ecosystem" provided an in-depth exploration of oneM2M's foundational role in outlining a horizontal architecture that is applicable across industry verticals and relevant to all participants in the IoT ecosystem. Over the years, oneM2M has played a crucial part in developing a variety of common IoT service layer functions. These include key capabilities such as registration, discovery, geo-location, and semantics. These features have evolved across several releases, the most recent being Release 4, which was published in 2023.

As technology continues to advance, oneM2M is now working on standardizing new features aimed at further enhancing the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) with IoT platforms. This standardization also focuses on enabling seamless interworking with blockchain systems, supporting the development of digital twin technologies, and advancing the application of IoT in Metaverse environments that emulate real-world scenarios.

Throughout the forum, attendees had the opportunity to hear from experts showcasing the next-generation IoT standard features, as well as the broader ecosystem that supports their implementation and growth. Furthermore, the forum highlighted how standardized IoT technologies can provide a robust foundation for emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, digital twins, and the Metaverse, particularly in their ability to act as a source of trusted data.

The panelists addressed many audience questions. Some of these were to gain a better understanding of the horizontal aspect of oneM2M crossing different verticals. Others focused on how collaboration with other standardization bodies works at a practical level. The first step towards collaboration is the partnership project approach which oneM2M adopted, like the well-established 3GPP model for mobile communications. One of oneM2M’s founding principles was to re-use established technologies and standards to avoid unnecessary re-invention. This involves collaboration with other entities to re-use existing standards and specifications defined outside of oneM2M by defining the technical interworking specifications between different standards. Collaboration is a two-way process and one example of another institution leveraging oneM2M’s standards involves the ITU-T’s SG20 (study group 20 focuses on IoT and smart cities and communities) which transposed oneM2M at the international level. The other ways that oneM2M works across sectors includes various collaborations with several ETSI Technical Committees (TCs) and Industry Specification groups (ISGs). These include ETSI Smart M2M, ISG CIM (context information management), and ISG MEC (multi-access edge computing).

In addition to raising awareness and interest in oneM2M, the Industry Forum discussion also touched on the oneM2M open-source ecosystem as well as tutorial and developer resources such as educational and coding examples that are accessible via oneM2M Jupyter Notebooks and an easy-to-use oneM2M online tutorial. To read more about these topics, we have made each of the following speaker presentations available on-line. 

Q: You mentioned a second Industry Forum on Data Standards. What topics featured during that event?

RH: The second event took place a day later, on 12 November and focused on the Data Standards Landscape and Gap Analysis. To put this session into context, it helps to think about the evolution of the IoT sector, beginning initially with connectivity and then shifting to issues of data management, data sharing and decision making. In the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, securing and leveraging high-quality data has become fundamental to the success of various advanced technologies and services. This data is critical for facilitating AI learning, blockchain integration, digital twin simulations, and distributed data processing via edge computing systems.

Now, as data continues to proliferate in scale and complexity, there is an urgent demand for standardized technologies that can ensure interoperability, maintain data quality, and safeguard privacy throughout the entire data lifecycle — from its collection to its analysis and eventual utilization.

Public and private sectors are actively working on the standardization of technologies capable of managing large-scale IoT data. oneM2M is leading one of the key global efforts in this space by advancing standards for AI/ML-driven IoT data. In parallel, international organizations such as "ITU-T SG-20" are focusing on AI and smart city data standards, while "ISO" is concentrating on database language standards for data storage and retrieval.

In addition, "ETSI TC SmartM2M" is working on data semantics standards, and ETSI Industry Standards Expert Groups are focusing on cross-domain context information management (via the ISG CIM) as well as permissioned distributed ledger standards, which are essential for establishing data trust (via the ISG PDL). Regional Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), such as "TTA" and "TSDSI", are also contributing by developing standards for IoT and smart city data. The variety of international efforts is evident from the following range of topics and speakers presenting at the forum.

  • oneM2M: Global data standards for IoT, Digital Twin, Semantics and Metaverse by Roland Hechwartner, oneM2M Chair, Deutsche Telekom
  • ETSI TC SmartM2M: Standards for smart things, semantics and ontologies by Joachim Koss, JK Consulting
  • ETSI ISG CIM: Context Awareness and linked IoT data standards by Frank Le Gall, ISG CIM Chair, EGM
  • ETSI ISG PDL: Permissioned distributed Ledger Standards for Data Trust by JaeSeung Song, ISG PDL member, Sejong University
  • ISO: Database language standards for data storage and retrieval by Keith Hare, ISO delegate, JCC Consulting Inc.
  • TSDSI India: Standardized based platform for smart city and agriculture by Hemant Jeevan Magadum, CDAC
  • TTA Korea: Data in IoT and Smart City by Seung Myeong Jeong, TTA member, KETI
  • ITU-T SG20: Data analytics, sharing, processing and management, including big data aspects, of IoT and SC&C by Dr. Gyu Myoung Lee, Liverpool John Moores University

With so many initiatives underway, there are clear benefits to sharing knowledge and standardization experiences. This was one of the goals of the second Industry Forum that oneM2M organized for the IEEE event. Through the Industry Forum, esteemed speakers offered valuable insights into these ongoing standardization efforts. The forum served as a platform for understanding the status of data-related standard activities and facilitated discussions on gap analyses.

Presenters also emphasized the importance of cooperation between various standards bodies to address gaps and align efforts globally for the future of data management and usage. Participants tabled initial problem statements and identified opportunities for future collaborations to overcome standardization gaps. Within ETSI, for instance, there is a proposal to merge several data related groups, TCs and ISGs in a new Technical Committee (TC) – ETSI TC Data. Similarly, oneM2M members are working with ISG CIM members on the integration of NGSI-LD in oneM2M. By this integration, oneM2M users will benefit from an expanded toolkit for managing the contextual aspects of IoT data. NGSL-LD users will benefit from oneM2M’s service enablement capabilities which provide a better integrated data pipeline to manage sensors and source IoT data.

Q: In addition to these activities, what were the main developments in the oneM2M Working Groups?

RH: As the TP meeting week was shorter than usual, we organized one hybrid TP session on Nov 12 and the closing TP session was held as online meeting on Nov 19. Individual WG sessions were scheduled over the meeting week from Nov 12 to Nov 15.

Massimo Vanetti (SBS) chaired the Requirements & Domain Models (RDM) Working Group with a focus on the work for Release 5. There was progress on the TS‑0023 which deals with Smart Device Template (SDT) based Information Model & Mapping for Vertical Industries, as well as the TR‑0002 on Use Cases and potential new requirements. Whilst the changes to the TS-0023 were mainly corrections and additions of missing short names, the changes to the TR-0002 targeted important use cases and requirements to enable privacy regulations, consent management as well as new requirements for data ownership and the right to be deleted. In addition, members reached agreement on a new draft version of the TR-0069 which deals with the topic of metaverse IoT.

Sessions of the System Design & Security (SDS) working group were chaired by Peter Niblett, IBM. There were agreed changes to the TS-0004 Service Layer Core Protocol and TS-0009 Http Protocol Binding documents. The TS-0006 Management Enablement (BBF) Broadband Forum and TS-0014 LWM2M Interworking are now being converted to markdown and ready for full development on GitLab. Furthermore, the group held a presentation and discussion about the different integration approaches for NGSI-LD in onemM2M. These will be described in the TR-0071 Integrating NGSI-LD API.

Bob Flynn, Exacta chaired the Testing & Developers Ecosystem (TDE) WG which included an update on the git-based specification development procedure. The number of converted specifications and work item documents is rising. The feedback from rapporteurs helps Miguel Ortega (ETSI) to improve the written documentation of the procedures as well as their easy digestion. The group’s goal is to develop all the Release 6 documents in the GitLab instance only.

Q: In terms of oneM2M’s elections, what were the outcomes?  

RH: Voting for the elections I mentioned took place at the opening TP sessions for the positions of the TP Chair, the TP Vice Chair and two SDS Vice Chair positions. Current holders of these positions were re-elected by acclamation. For the record, these are: Roland Hechwartner, Deutsche Telekom affiliated to ETSI for the TP Chair; JaeSeung Song, Sejong University affiliated to ETSI for the TP Vice Chair as well as Wei Zhou, CICT affiliated to CCSA and SeungMyeong Jeong, KETI affiliated to TTA.

As oneM2M members, we also express a big thank you to two outgoing officials for their work and support to oneM2M. These are TaeHyun Kim, SyncTechno Inc (ETSI), Vice Chair of RDM WG and Sherzod Elamanov, SyncTechno Inc (ETSI), Vice Chair of the TDE WG.

Q: oneM2M is running an international hackathon. Did any developments feature in the TP?

RH: Yes, there is a hackathon event currently underway. Several members are involved as mentors to the teams in the event and there seems to be a high level of engagement. The event started on 14 October with fourteen teams from five countries and over fifty participants. The team deliverables deadline is 6 December. After that the evaluation takes place with the Award Ceremony on 13 December.

The event has been useful for hackathon team mentors who are also involved in standardization activities to spot improvements to technical and educational documents that will help developers in the future.

Q: In closing, what are the plans for the coming TPs?

RH: TSDSI, oneM2M’s SDO partner in India, will host the next Technical Plenary TP#68. This will take place in Delhi, India from February 10 – 14, 2025. There are also plans for a Stakeholder Day on Wednesday, February 12. This will bring together representatives from India industries as well as from oneM2M membership to exchange and discuss on IoT technology development and the oneM2M standard.