Internet of Things: Wireless Standards and offerings
IoT standards are like the wild west since there has been no clear winner in terms of standards and platform play in terms of a market adoption. Cellular M2M has been around for a long time addressing custom adoptions in the SCADA and Industrial verticals, the evolution of “Streaming” big data, Sensors, SaaS, IPV6 adoption, wearable devices and customer education have had a significant role in mainstream adoption. Any IoT provider should take decisions about connectivity based solely on the use case for their solution along with cost and benefits ROI decisions. There are many options available based on — data rates, communication ranges, cost of sensor hardware, Telemetry, battery usage and upstream analytics.
Wi-Fi / Wi-Fi HaLow: Wi-Fi technology is used for wireless local area networking with devices based on the IEEE 802.11 standards. Wi-Fi most commonly uses the 2.4 gigahertz (12 cm) UHF and 5 gigahertz (6 cm) SHF ISM radio bands.
A new low-power, long-range version of Wi-Fi that bolsters Internet of Things (IoT) connections called Wi-Fi HaLow (pronounced HAY-Low) is based on the pending IEEE 802.11ah specification. It will be used for everything from smart homes and wearables to smart cities and connected cars where thousands of battery-operated sensors can be connected to a single Wi-Fi Access Point (AP).
Wi-Fi HaLow will operate in the unlicensed wireless spectrum below 1GHz, allowing it to more easily penetrate walls and barriers because of the propagation capabilities of low-frequency radio waves. Its range will be nearly double today’s available Wi-Fi, with some estimates ranging as high as 1 kilometer, a distance equal to 3,280 feet.
BLE: Bluetooth Low energy is a version of Bluetooth technology that focuses on low energy consumption than high data throughput. The challenges Bluetooth classic faced were fast battery draining and frequent loss of connection, requiring frequent pairing and re-pairing.
It’s the design of BLE that has enabled it to be more intelligent in managing connections while preserving energy. While Bluetooth 3.0 focuses on higher data rate functionality, Bluetooth 4.0 emphasizes less on maintaining constant bit streams of information, but rather sends small chunks of data when necessary and puts the connection to sleep mode during idle periods.
Zigbee: ZigBee has a large installed base of operations traditionally more in industrial settings. ZigBee PRO and ZigBee Remote Control (RF4CE), among other available ZigBee profiles, are based on the IEEE802.15.4 protocol, which is an industry-standard wireless networking technology operating at 2.4GHz targeting applications that require relatively infrequent data exchanges at low data-rates within a 100m range such as in a home or building.
Z-Wave: Z-Wave is a low-power RF communications technology that is primarily designed for home automation for products such as lamp controllers and sensors among many others (eg. Samsung Smartthings). Optimized for reliable and low-latency communication of small data packets with data rates up to 100kbit/s, it operates in the sub-1GHz band and is impervious to interference from WiFi and other wireless technologies in the 2.4-GHz range such as Bluetooth or ZigBee. It supports full mesh networks without the need for a coordinator node and is very scalable, enabling control of up to 232 devices.
Thread: Thread is a relatively new IP-based IPv6 networking protocol aimed at the home automation environment. Based on 6LowPAN, and also like it, it is not an IoT applications protocol like Bluetooth or ZigBee. However, from an application point of view, it is primarily designed as a complement to WiFi as it recognizes that while WiFi is good for many consumer devices that it has limitations for use in a home automation setup. Launched in mid-2014 by the Thread Group, the royalty-free protocol is based on various standards including IEEE802.15.4.
SigFox: Sigfox employs a proprietary technology that enables communication using the Industrial, Scientific and Medical ISM radio band which uses 868MHz in Europe and 902MHz in the US. It utilizes a wide-reaching signal that passes freely through solid objects, called “ultra narrowband” and requires little energy, being termed “Low-power Wide-area network (LPWAN)”. The network is based on one-hop star topology and requires a mobile operator to carry the generated traffic. The signal can also be used to easily cover large areas and to reach underground objects.
LoRa: LoRaWAN targets wide-area network (WAN) applications and is designed to provide low-power WANs with features specifically needed to support low-cost mobile secure bi-directional communication in IoT, M2M and smart city and industrial applications. Optimized for low-power consumption and supporting large networks with millions and millions of devices, data rates range from 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps. LoRa networks have a range of 2–5 Km in dense urban and 15 Km in suburban areas and are based on IEEE 802.15.4g standards.
LTE (eMTC, NB-IoT, LTE-M) / EC-GSM: In 3GPP Rel-12, a new UE category — UE Category 0— was introduced to address the low cost/complexity aspects of the design goal of low power consumption sacrificing data rates priming it for IoT deployment. A Power Save Mode (PSM) was introduced for a new low-power mode that allows the device to skip the periodic page monitoring cycles between active data transmissions, allowing the device to enter a deep-sleep power state. In 3GPP Rel-13, LTE category M1 UEs are introduced by the eMTC (enhanced Machine-Type Communications) technology, as a direct extension from category 0 UEs from Rel-12 MTC. The key objectives are reduction of device complexity and cost, extended coverage and long battery life.
Extended Coverage-GSM was introduced in 3GPP Rel-13 given the extensive global footprint and broad eco-system available for Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) networks. EC-GSM-IoT is a standard-based Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technology is based on enhanced General Packet Radio Service (eGPRS) and designed as a high capacity, long range, low energy and low complexity cellular system for IoT communications. The optimizations made in EC-GSM-IoT that need to be made to existing GSM networks can be made as a software upgrade, ensuring coverage and accelerated time to-market. Battery life is up to 10 years can be supported for a wide range of use cases.
LTE-M is the simplified industry term for the LTE-MTC LPWA technology standard published by 3GPP in the Release 13 specification. It refers to LTE CatM1, suitable for the IoT. LTE-M is a low power wide area technology, which supports IoT through lower device complexity and provides extended coverage, while allowing the reuse of the LTE installed base. This allows battery lifetime as long as 10 years or more for a wide range of use cases, with the modem costs reduced to 20–25% of the current modems.
NB-IoT (narrow band IoT — also called Cat-M2) has a similar goal to Cat-M, but it uses a different technology (DSSS modulation vs. LTE radios). Therefore, NB-IoT doesn’t operate in the LTE band, meaning that providers have a higher upfront cost to deploy NB-IoT. NB-IoT is touted as the potentially less expensive option as it eliminates the need for a gateway. Other infrastructures typically have gateways aggregating sensor data, which then communicates with the main server (here’s a deeper explanation of gateways). With NB-IoT, sensor data is sent directly to the main server.
Key takeaways: The decision to use which technology will depend on —
(a) Use case: Asset tracking like container tracking, fleet, etc will use commercial wireless technology like LTE.
(b) Guaranteed service with lot of bandwidth usage: for example video surveillance would required Wi-Fi based systems.
(c) Cost of operation: Smart parking, Smart lighting applications can work on SigFox or LoRa networks.
<For more tech info> https://www.slideshare.net/harishvadada/io-t-standards-ecosystem
NB: All opinions expressed here are explicitly my own, not related to work done for any of my employers or past clients. Twitter: @Telecomcloud_5g
