The Internet of Things (IoT) market is predicted to be a key business driver of the telecom industry and its upcoming next generation. IoT will require new technology requirements for its varied use cases. 5G Americas, the industry trade association and voice of 5G and LTE for the Americas, mentions in its latest publication of LTE Progress Leading to the 5G Massive Internet of Things (Massive IoT).
“Some cellular service providers in the U.S. are already adding more IoT connections than mobile phone connections, and the efforts at 3GPP in defining standards for the successful deployment of a wide variety of services across multiple industries will contribute to the growing success for consumers and the enterprise,” noted Jean Au, Staff Manager, technical marketing, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and co-leader of 5G Americas whitepaper LTE Progress Leading to the 5G Massive IoT (MIoT).
Today, Low-Power Wide-Area (LPWA) is already gaining attention and it is anticipated that cellular-based technologies such as LTE-M (Machine) and Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) will become the leading LPWA standards by 2020.
Operators can choose from several Cellular IoT (CIoT) technologies based on their spectrum portfolio, legacy networks, and requirements of their offered services.
The generic requirements for IoT are low cost, energy efficiency, ubiquitous coverage, and scalability (ability to support a large number of connected machines in a network). Alternatively, Critical IoT applications will have very high demands for reliability, availability, and low latency which could be enabled by LTE or 5G capabilities. The whitepaper is available for free download. Read more…