Towards standardization of M2M communication in Smart Appliances

Smart appliances are appliances that are networked with their ambient and use information from the home environment to autonomously make decisions, e.g. to switch a service off to save energy. While communication at physical layer is supported by a variety of standards (e.g. X10, ZigBee, KNX, Z-Wave, WLAN, LON), communication at the semantic layer lacks agreed and applicable standards. This has become a major showstopper for the market success of smart appliances. This paper gives an overview of the outcomes of the discussions developed during the 3rd VoCamp on “Energy Using and Producing Products Management”, introducing objectives, requirements, and existing standardization efforts. Particular focus is put on joining the different views by which the semantics of M2M communication can be organized, device- centric or service based, typically. The firs approach describes the composition of appliances and their integration within the home ecosystem; the second, instead, represents appliances as set of services contributing to different home tasks, e.g., energy management.