The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next revolution in the mobile ecosystem. IoT services are likely to be a key driver for further growth in cellular. An estimated 30 billion connected devices will be deployed by 2025 [Machina Research, May 2015], of which cellular IoT (i.e. 2G, 3G and 4G technologies used for IoT but not specifically optimized for IoT) and Low-Power Wide-Area (LPWA) modules are forecast to account for 7 billion units in 2025 [Machina Research, May 2015].
Cellular IoT is expected to provide numerous services, including utility meters, vending machines, automotive (fleet management, smart traffic, real time traffic information to the vehicle, security monitoring and reporting), medical metering and alerting. Already, devices such as e-book readers, GPS navigation aids and digital cameras are connected to the internet.
The key requirements for cellular IoT to enable these services and be competitive are:
- Long battery life
- Low device cost
- Low deployment cost
- Extended coverage
- Support for a massive number of devices.
This white paper outlines a cellular IoT solution based on LTE that meets these requirements and enhances the radio and core networks. The radio network needs to work with simple, low cost devices. The transmission and higher layer protocols need to help devices consume less power, with the aim of achieving a battery life of over ten years. Finally, extended coverage is required for deep indoor and rural areas.
Network elements need to handle charging, subscription and massive support for small packages. Today, LTE supports IoT with so-called Cat.1 devices, while LTE-Advanced extends device battery life to ten years with a power saving mode. LTE-Advanced Pro further optimizes coverage, device battery life and costs, as well as capacity for a massive number of connected devices with the introduction of two new technologies: eMTC (enhanced Machine Type Communication, often referred to as LTE-M) and NB-IoT (NarrowBand-Internet of Things).
These two systems will support a scalable solution for data rates. Both solutions can be deployed either in shared spectrum together with legacy LTE, or as stand-alone, in a refarmed GSM carrier with a bandwidth as narrow as 180kHz for NB-IoT. Nokia believes that LTE-M, NB-IoT, and EC-GSM-IoT (Extended Coverage GSM for IoT) are better able to satisfy the connectivity profiles and requirements for IoT than legacy cellular networks. This is because by upgrading existing networks with an easy software upgrade, they provide optimized device KPIs, battery life, coverage and cost, along with the expected benefits from the use of licensed spectrum, such as no coexistence issue with other cellular networks.