All posts tagged: lte

The emerging Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) standard is a wireless technology designed especially for enabling cellular connectivity to Internet-of-Things devices, and is designed to combine long-range mobile connectivity with compatibility with existing LTE mobile network infrastructure and low power consumption for sensors or other long-lived devices.

As the NB-IoT standard is specifically aimed at enabling cellular low-power, wide-area (LPWA) wireless networks, targeted at machine-to-machine and IoT applications such as environmental and agricultural monitoring and the metering and automated reading of utilities such as water and power meters.

Furthermore, NB-IoT aims to provide reliable, wide-area network coverage, low power consumption, and strong scalability with support for very large numbers of devices on the network. This interesting new standard has been under active development during the last two years by several major players in the telecoms and networks industry – including Qualcomm, Huawei and Vodafone.

Vodafone believes the emerging NB-IoT standard will be the “killer” technology in the LPWA wireless IoT race, beating alternative technologies such as SigFox and LoRa. Vodafone is one of the key players in the NB-IoT forum, an industry association established last year to advance the development of narrowband IoT technology.

NB-IoT is one of several wireless technologies that aim to overcome the power and therefore transmission range limitations of alternative wireless networking technologies for LPWA Internet-of-Things applications. NB-IoT is a licensed-spectrum technology, unlike alternatives such as SigFox and LoRa which rely on unlicensed, or class-licensed, RF spectrum.

Although the use of unlicensed spectrum means that other LPWA technologies do not require a specific spectrum allocation and therefore are cheaper and easier for service providers to deploy, the limited bandwidth, relatively high congestion and limited transmission power in these radio bands limits the range and performance of the network.

With more and more wireless electronic devices in use everywhere, congestion in the unlicensed ISM radio bands is only going to get even worse in the future, NB-IoT hopes to overcome these limitations, in part by using licensed spectrum allocations like the rest of the mobile network.

The next generation of wide-area wireless IoT is a competitive field, with LoRa representing a more “open” system using unlicensed (but relatively congested) radio spectrum, and so far this has attracted support from many telecommunications service providers and operators including French operators Orange and Bouygues Telecom.

SigFox is also continually growing, with claims that they are presently deploying or operating networks in 17 countries. NB-IoT is still lagging slightly behind in this regard, with no widespread commercial deployment yet.

Vodafone has chosen to throw its weight behind NB-IoT instead of the competing technologies, however. Vodafone, in partnership with Chinese equipment supplier Huawei Technologies, which is another major NB-IoT backer, has recently opened a dedicated lab for NB-IoT development at its Newbury, UK headquarters.

NB-IoT Forum members, and other developers and organisations looking to use the NB-IoT standard to support commercial services, will now be able to test their applications at Vodafone’s new facility.

And with the backing of Vodafone, Huawei and other major industry players – NB-IoT is now in the process of being adopted as an official standard within the 3G Partnership Project (3GPP), with the expectation that it will be finalised and included in LTE release 13 later this year.

There have been some delays in this process, however, and there have been suggestions that NB-IoT will not be finalised in time for Release 13, instead slipping to Release 14 at some point in the future.

This has the potential to be a significant setback for the nascent technology, slowing down its widespread acceptance industry-wide, as well as allowing extra time for competing LPWA technologies such as LoRa and SigFox to continue to grow, with more deployments, bigger networks, and greater provider and end-user familiarity with these technologies.

One of the factors behind Vodafone’s support for NB-IoT is its strong cost-effectiveness for providers who have already built and operated modern mobile networks. Vodafone claims that 80 to 90 percent of their currently deployed base stations use Huawei’s SingleRAN technology for their Radio Access Network (RAN).

SingleRAN technology uses software-defined radio to allow a single network to support multiple different mobile telecommunications standards without hardware replacements, making it cheaper and easier to keep up with new developments in mobile communications standards.

The easy integration of NB-IoT into the existing LTE mobile ecosystem, and its compatibility with LTE network infrastructure without new hardware deployments, are features that make it particularly attractive to established providers in the mobile communications sector.

For mobile network operators that maintain older base stations that have not yet been upgraded to LTE, however, moving to networks that can support NB-IoT may be a more expensive and slow process.

Nevertheless, NB-IoT is coming and this is where the LX Group us ready to work with you. We have end-to-end experience and demonstrated results in the entire process of IoT product development, and we’re ready to help bring your existing or new product ideas to life. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, telephone 1800 810 124, or just keep in the loop by connecting here.

LX is an award-winning electronics design company based in Sydney, Australia. LX services include full turnkey design, electronics, hardware, software and firmware design. LX specialises in IoT embedded systems and wireless technologies design.

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.

Nokia, Ericsson and Intel have recently announced their combined support for a new standard called Narrow-Band Long-Term Evolution (NB-LTE), which they see as an ideal connectivity solution for the growing cellular Internet-of-Things market.

NB-LTE is an improved variant of existing 4th Generation LTE (Long-Term Evolution) mobile technology which has been optimised for low-power machine-to-machine and Internet-of-Things applications.

This new standard is NB-LTE is well suited for IoT applications – thanks to being a narrow-band cellular communications standard for applications that aren’t very data intensive – which offers low implementation cost, ease of use and good power.

NB-LTE networks operate with narrow-band 200kHz channels, meaning that existing spectrum allocations such as 2G can’t simply be re-allocated to support the new technology. However, NB-LTE can be used in shared spectrum alongside existing LTE networks.

This narrow-band approach is particularly valuable today as more and more stakeholders are using the RF spectrum, with more spectrum congestion and less unallocated space.

Nokia, Ericsson and Intel plan to work closely together to develop and bring to market infrastructure and technology that supports the uptake of the NB-LTE standard, as well as products that make use of it. These companies aim to support the building of an ecosystem around NB-LTE that accelerates its adoption, including its use in in IoT applications.

They believe that it makes sense to take advantage of the existing widespread deployment of cellular networks to support and drive IoT adoption … that the development of the NB-LTE standard helps achieve this at minimal cost through the re-use of existing infrastructure where appropriate, and that this development will bring benefits to consumers such as enhanced connectivity of devices at a lower cost.

Intel intends to support commercial rollout of the technology, providing a roadmap for their NB-LTE chipsets and product upgrades beginning in 2016 that will enable NB-LTE connectivity combined with slim form factors.

These products will add to Intel’s growing NB-LTE portfolio. Nokia and Ericsson will provide the technology needed for infrastructure upgrades, supporting an extension of existing LTE base stations and networks to NB-LTE technology.

Narrow-band LTE is intended to make it easier for mobile operators to support the huge numbers of small devices that IoT applications are expected to bring into existing 4G LTE networks, without network congestion.

Existing 4G networks are considered to be crucial to IoT development because they’ll be around for decades – hence the Long-Term Evolution name. Using this infrastructure provides a kind of future-proofing for IoT devices, which may easily have a longer useful lifespan than a smartphone.

On the other hand, existing, 2G and 3G networks may soon be decommissioned. Taking advantage of the existing global footprint of LTE cellular infrastructure ensures a global foundation for a vast range of new cellular IoT applications for consumer and industry users, and ensures that this will be a stable foundation.

But NB-LTE doesn’t have industry-wide support, and other companies such as Huawei are putting their weight behind the existing Narrowband Cellular IoT, or NB-CIoT, standard. NB-CIoT has already gained operator support from major players such as Vodafone and China Unicom.

However, the NB-LTE standard, unlike NB-CIoT, does not require any overlay network for compatibility with existing LTE networks and chipsets. This means that NB-LTE can be more easily deployed across existing LTE networks, compared to the competing NB-CIoT standard, and this is an important advantage.

The key difference is that the NB-LTE standard makes it much easier to re-use existing LTE infrastructure – both in terms of the network infrastructure and the chipsets in end-user devices. This leads to clear advantages for the NB-LTE standard in terms of cost and deployment time.

At a recent meeting, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Radio Access Network (RAN) group has looked at these different proposals and decided on a common way forward, which is important since narrowband LTE specifications are likely to play a crucial role in the development of the cellular IoT sector.

What they have agreed on is a standard called Narrowband-IoT or NB-IoT. This is a new standard that is not exactly the same as either the NB-LTE proposal or the NB-CIoT proposal, but something which seems to include the benefits of both approaches, which all stakeholders can agree on as a common standard for future IoT-friendly LTE development.

This new standard reconciles the differences between the narrowband standards being promoted by different technology vendors, and provides for low device cost, low power consumption, and an optimised network architecture with IoT applications in mind that provides improved indoor coverage, low delay sensitivity and support for a massive number of low-throughput IoT devices on the network.

Overall the Narrow-Band Long-Term Evolution standard offers a glimpse into the future of M2M devices and the Internet of Things. However if you have a wireless M2M product idea or revision requirement – we can work together to meet your needs.

Here at the LX Group we have end-to-end experience and demonstrated results in the entire process of IoT product development, and we’re ready to help bring your existing or new product ideas to life. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.

Not only here in Australia but in parts of the USA and other countries, cellular providers are closing down their 2G GSM network to reallocate spectrum to their faster UMTS 3G and LTE wireless networks.

This shutdown will have a great effect on existing cellular M2M applications as a large percentage were designed around inexpensive GPRS modules – or before UMTs was available. Soon all these devices will be rendered inoperable and will need to be redesigned or replaced with radio hardware that can access the newer cellular networks.

There are many chipsets and modules to choose from, and one new example is the Colibri LTE Platform from Sequans Communications – a chipset solution for mobile LTE (commonly marketed as 4G LTE) cellular connectivity, specifically aimed at Internet-of-Things and M2M applications.

Colibri LTE is a part of the Sequans Streamlite LTE family of chipset products for 4G connectivity in IoT applications, designed for use in devices such as embedded Internet-connected sensors requiring wireless cellular connectivity, tablets, mobile routers or other portable devices.

Their LTE chipset is designed to support Category 4 LTE user equipment, providing a downlink rate up to 150 Mbps and an uplink rate up to 50 Mbps, providing plenty of bandwidth for current and future applications.

The Colibri platform comprises dedicated ICs for the RF platform and the baseband processor, an integrated IoT applications processor in the baseband IC that runs Sequans’ carrier-proven LTE protocol stack, an IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) client, and a comprehensive software package for over-the-air device management and packet routing.

Colibri have designed their products with optimisations for IoT and M2M applications in mind – providing low power consumption and high performance at a relatively low cost. This enables an affordable connectivity for mass-market IoT and M2M products.

Furthermore, the high-level integration and highly efficient architecture provide a strong balance of features and performance while achieving very low price points for cost-sensitive M2M and IoT applications.

Colibri’s software suite is based on more than a decade of proven field experience. It is running in major 4G deployments around the world and is one of the most mature solutions in the global 4G ecosystem. It includes the entire LTE Release 10 software stack along with the drivers and host applications required for a complete 4G system.

There is much more than just data – as Colibri supports VoLTE (Voice over LTE) and Wi-Fi SoftAP as well as Active Interference Rejection (AIR) technology – which is an innovative and powerful interference mitigation algorithm implemented on all Sequans LTE platforms.

AIR has been tested and proven at both the system and link levels and has been shown to significantly improve user experience and increase network capacity, especially near the cell edge where signal is weak.

For designers of embedded devices in IoT and M2M applications, the Colibri EZ-Link LTE hardware modules offer complete, single-mode LTE solutions based on the Colibri chipset and platform, simplifying integration and shortening the time to market for the development of hardware devices and products with cellular connectivity.

These modules are ideal for adding LTE connectivity to embedded devices and the ever-expanding array of new types of IoT products now going wireless for the first time. EZLink LTE modules come pre-tested, pre-integrated and pre-certified for easy drop-in integration into your design, with IoT-friendly interfaces, LP-DDR SDRAM, embedded boot Flash and power management included.

These compact hardware modules, available in either the M.2 PC card form factor or an ultra-small surface-mountable LGA form factor, are based on the Colibri LTE chipset platform and include all the other elements necessary for a complete LTE modem system – allowing for a simplified, cost-effective, all-in-one solution for adding LTE connectivity to numerous types of IoT, M2M, consumer electronics and mobile computing devices.

These modules incorporate the Colibri LTE platform along with all the other elements required for a complete LTE modem system, including an LTE-optimised transceiver, a complete dual-band RF front-end for LTE bands 4 and 13, and key peripheral interfaces, all in a single compact package.

Voice and data are supported – including Voice over LTE, Wi-Fi SoftAP, and all major operating systems such as Windows, Android, ChromeOS, Linux and MacOS. Interfacing with hardware is easy thanks to support for a wide variety of hardware interfaces – including USB 2.0, HSIC, SDIO, SPI and high-speed UART.

According to Sequans, the availability of these powerful and compact yet low-cost chipset solutions for 4G LTE, already certified for use with Verizon Wireless in the United States, the world’s leading LTE network, will accelerate adoption of single-mode LTE across the whole spectrum of IoT and M2M applications.

Game-changing efficiencies built into the Colibri platform mean that the costs of embedded LTE modules are now at or below 3G costs for the first time, making the move from 3G to the high bandwidth of 4G/LTE connectivity very attractive in a range of embedded mobile, M2M and IoT applications where the appropriate Telco network infrastructure exists.

Colibri is just one of many UMTS and LTE wireless options available for your new or existing Internet of Things application, and here at the LX Group our team can help you move past the 2G shutdown and enable longevity for your products. Getting started is easy – click here to contact us, or telephone 1800 810 124.

Published by LX Pty Ltd for itself and the LX Group of companies, including LX Design House, LX Solutions and LX Consulting, LX Innovations.