Converged Mobile Cellular Networks and Wireless Sensor Networks for Machine-to-Machine Communications

In recent years, machine-to-machine (M2M) communications are under rapid development to meet the fast-increasing requirements of multi-type wireless services and applications. In order to satisfy M2M communications requirements, heterogeneous networks convergence appears in many areas, i.e., mobile cellular networks (MCNs) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are evolving from heterogeneous to converged. In this paper, we introduce the system architecture and application requirement for converged MCN and WSN, where mobile terminals in MCN are acting as both sensor nodes and gateways for WSN. And then, we discuss the joint optimization of converged networks for M2M communications. Finally, we discuss the technical challenges in the converged process of MCN and WSN.