From Machine-to-Machine Communications to Internet of Things: Enabling Communication Technologies

The term Internet of Things (IoT) was first coined by Kevin Ashton in the late 90s, but in reality, IoT goes back a lot further than that. At the beginning it was only a vision but today with the development of communication technologies, and in particular wireless communications, it is becoming rapidly a reality in different domains and sectors [1]. IoT and its enabling services are revolutionizing the way we live and creating huge growth in our economy. According to IoT paradigm, everything and everyone can be part of the Internet. This vision redefines the way people interact with each other and objects they are surrounded by. With the development of communication technologies, billions of IoT devices are currently connected and it is expected there will be a few tens of billions connected devices within the next five years [2]. At the core of IoT, machine-to-machine (M2M) communications or machine-type communications (MTC) plays the fundamental role by providing connectivity between devices and servers. In that regard, it is concluded that IoT is a broader term, which contains devices, M2M communications, and data processing [3]. Thus, IoT vision cannot be materialized without providing efficient M2M communications.