After the first wave of wireless revolution of where people were connected, in the second wave machine to machine (M2M) technology enables communication between devices and they are advancing into our daily lives.
M2M applications have the potential to transform every sector of business and society by enabling informed decision, optimizing the process, and innovative business models.Though M2M applications can be applied across all industires, current early adopters of the M2M technology are in sectors like process-based industries,manufacturing,transport, healthcare and energy.
Remote Maintenance and Control
As the ATM and cell tower sites are spanning across the country in a rapid pace, major challenges faced by the ATM operators and cell tower operators are the shrinking margins and escalating operating costs, in operating and maintaining the remote sites.
Optimizing energy consumption and monitoring passive assets across the remote sites by deploying M2M solution will facilitate energy efficiency and effective utilization of passive assets.
Oil & Gas Industry
Machine-to-machine communications can help oil and gas companies to monitor equipment, and employees who are working at remote sites. At present Gas utility companies use helicopters to detect leakage in the pipelines. With the implementation of M2M solution, companies can diagnose the leakage and pain-point accurately.
Healthcare
M2M is taking off in healthcare from monitoring patients to medical equipment.Elderly and infirm patients need constant care, M2M facilitates to link patients and practitioners thus saves time, resources, and lives. Patient’s data on blood pressure, heart rate, blood levels etc.are made available in doctors smartphone to monitor their patients data at regular intervals.
Monitoring of medical equipment is crucial as a breakdown can even cost a life. M2M powered equipment alerts on maintenance requirement and averts downtime caused by equipment failure.
Other use in this application area includes the Smart Pills which assists to diagonise oestophagus disorders and are used in gastro – intestinal endoscopy tests.The smart pills consists of a tiny camera, which when swallowed by patients takes pre-defined number of snaps per second and the data is passed onto the computer wirelessly for diagnosis.
Transport
Transportation is another area rich with M2M possibilities. Fleet management enables to monitor the workforce/ location of delivery vehicles in real time.Connected cars are making inroads as it improves fuel efficiency, provides driving guidelines,
Also, insurance companies are resorting to m2m technology to develop tailored policies and to tract the driving behavior of clients to prevent fraud and avoid operating costs.
Smart Energy
Rising energy costs and carbon footprint has turned energy conservation and environmental protection a serious concern to consider. Smart meters enables consumers in managing energy consumption. M2M helps customers to dramatically reduce energy use, improve reliability, reduce waste and increase efficiency
The massive growth of power transmission network and transmission capacity, has spurred complexity and risk in managing the power grids.M2M powered grid improves interaction between energy providers and consumers. It manages peak demand, averts blackouts, captures the grid disturbances like grid leakage and grid breakage accurately.
