NB-IoT & LTE Cat-M1 Field Measurements and SLA Verification
Application Notes
Introduction
Internet of Things (IoT) is today’s megatrend in wireless communication industry. Machine-to-machine (M2M) wireless connectivity is being adopted in various verticals at increasing pace. The number of IoT devices deployed by 2020 is expected to increase to approximately 20 billion.
Cellular IoT (CIoT) is defined as a set of technologies under the 3GPP umbrella to enable IoT connectivity using the licensed frequencies, co-existing with the legacy cellular broadband technologies, such as LTE, UMTS and GSM. The main CIoT technologies being rolled out globally are NB-IoT and LTE Cat-M1. The term CIoT is used to make the distinction to non-3GPP IoT technologies, such as LoRa and SigFox, which are deployed in unlicensed bands.
IoT applications can be categorized to massive IoT and critical IoT. Massive IoT includes smart metering, home security, etc. The requirements for massive IoT include years of battery life, scalability to very large number of devices, robust coverage, and deep indoor facilities. The NB-IoT technology is optimized for this use case. Critical IoT includes applications, such as health care and connected car, where very low latency levels on ultra-reliable networks, often combined with very high throughput is required. LTE Cat-M1 is optimized to meet these requirements.