V. M2M AND LTE-A NETWORK CONVERGENCE
M2M communication is one of the focuses of the LTE-A
project, as the demand for M2M is increasing rapidly. Within
the next several years M2M communications are expected to
eventually exceed the number of H2H (human-to-human)
communications. A primary driver for the replacement of H2H
by M2M communication is that there are almost 50 billion
machines in the world, but only 6 billion people.
A. Our Dual Gatweawy Model
In this paper, a tight coupling dual mode gateway is
proposed. Employing a dual mode gateway for merging two
networks enables us to use the specific features and protocols
for each network individually. Our WSN network employs the
IEEE 802.15.4 standard and 6LoWPAN protocol stack, which
enable us to address all the nodes individually using the IPv6
protocol. This also facilitates power efficient connections
among the resource-constrained nodes in the WSN. The WSN
network is connected to the LTE-A network via our dual mode
gateway so that all nodes can be controlled and monitored by
the LTE system through the gateway. Our model is similar in
configuration to the architecture proposed by Liu et al. [14]
shown in Fig. 2.