Automatic over-the-air provisioning for Wi-Fi equipped M2M devices

In this paper, we first describe the challenges of provisioning Wi-Fi equipped M2M devices, which may be behind Network Address Translation (NAT). We then articulate an automatic over-the-air provisioning mechanism that includes four steps: device discovery, user account setup for device, ESSID/IP configuration, and device registration (including NAT tunnel configuration). The mechanism enables M2M service providers to manage the registered M2M devices and allows M2M users to access these M2M devices behind NAT using a unique fully qualified domain name (FQDN). Finally, we elaborate the performance analysis and technical discussions related to the automatic provisioning mechanism.