Range vs Data Rate for IoT connectivity technologies

Smart City Security and Cyber Attacks

Technology adoption is bringing about massive change in major cities around the world from smart traffic lights to knowing exactly what time transportation will arrive and paying for public services with the touch of a credit card or personal device. The Smart London initiative embraces technology that improves the lives of residents, businesses and visitors by allowing them to experience the city in a more seamless and immersive way. With the capital’s population predicted to grow by over a million between 2011 and 2021, new technologies will undoubtedly play a big role in the way we see and experience London. But with the rise of malicious targeted threats, how can smart cities secure their IT initiatives from possible attack?

Navigant Research forecasts that the smart city technology market will represent over $20 billion in 2020. In line with this explosive growth, investment in more complex technologies will be significant, but as always, with increased technology comes greater vulnerability. One of the major security concerns facing smart cities is an “APT” (Advanced Persistent Threat). These are targeted attacks (such as malware) executed by a hacker or group of hackers, motivated not by financial gain, but instead by political gain or “hacktivism.”

As a city’s framework and infrastructure becomes increasingly technology-depended, IT security must work hard in the frontlines looking out for suspicious activities and abnormal behaviour. Measures are especially needed to protect the weakest link in the city’s IT infrastructure – the endpoints and end-user devices, to ensure compliance enforcement of security policies and standards.

• What are the worst possible scenarios for attacks on the infrastructure of the smart city?

In smart cities, everything is connected, from local government, utilities, financial and transactional services to transport and emergency services. For example, in a city the size of London with a population exceeding 8.5 million, having a critical service that has been attacked and doesn’t respond can have a devastating effect. The attack can create a domino effect, where many of the operations dependent on that service would malfunction or simply shut down. For hackers, knowing which services are essential to the functioning of the city, can form the basis of a targeted attack. Such attacks can work in hidden mode and take down the most crucial components of the city’s infrastructure, placing the entire city at risk of complete standstill or worst.

Such an instance of multiple city services malfunctioning simultaneously would at the very least result in a failure of the economic infrastructure for 48 hours or more. It is hard to imagine the consequences, with the loss of every economic transaction and the time needed to replace the damaged infrastructure, while trying to maintain law and order. The costs and impact would be huge and not only in financial terms, but also in the long-term loss of confidence; the image of the smart city would suffer making the same level of future adoption hard to recoup.

• Securing the IT infrastructure behind the city’s smart services

To ensure optimal security of the city’s IT infrastructure, it would need to be monitored from end-to-end, including end-user devices where it is most vulnerable. Solutions that can provide visibility of the entire IT infrastructure and endpoints in real-time and are able to process this information coming from multiple sources and technologies using IT analytics, can play a crucial role in the security of a smart city.

According to the analyst firm Gartner, in 2009, there were 2.5 billion connected devices, mostly mobile phones, PCs and tablets. In 2020, they predict there will be over 30 billion devices connected, of much greater variety. (Source: Gartner press release Nov. 2013)

With end-users accessing an increasing amount of smart services with their devices, they make easy targets for malware and hacktivists whose ultimate goals are to reach the heart of the infrastructure of a smart city where they can cause the most damage. Smart cities need solutions to monitor their IT infrastructure and especially their end-user endpoints, as that is the weakest link in the IT security chain and therefore the area where they are most vulnerable. End-user devices can be used as the entry point to an attack on the IT infrastructure so standard technologies, solutions and processes already used to protect against suspicious activity or threats need to be bolstered. Real-time IT analytics provide an additional layer of protection for smart city infrastructure and endpoints against these potential vulnerabilities.

Being able to detect an attack at a very early stage would enable the city’s authorities to react quickly and stop an attack from spreading. IT analytics solutions provide alerts on suspicious activities and behaviour, acting as pre-warnings on these types of attacks. This means greater proactivity by detecting abnormal activities and enforcing security compliance standards at all times with real-time and accurate information, which could halt or prevent an incident before the damage is too great.

Source: Poul Nielsen - Nexthink

10th Annual Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Mobile Forecast Projects 70 Percent of Global Population Will Be Mobile Users With 1.5 Connections per Capita by 2020

Since 2000, when the first camera phone was introduced, the number of mobile users has quintupled. By 2020, there will be 5.5 billion mobile users, representing 70 percent of the global population1, according to today's release of the Cisco Visual Networking Index™ (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast (2015 to 2020). The adoption of mobile devices, increased mobile coverage, and demand for mobile content are driving user growth two times faster than the global population over the next five years. This surge of mobile users, smart devices, mobile video and 4G networks will increase mobile data traffic eight-fold over the next five years.

Smart mobile devices and connections2 are projected to represent 72 percent of total mobile devices and connections by 2020 -- up from 36 percent in 2015. Smart devices are forecasted to generate 98 percent of mobile data traffic by 2020. From an individual device perspective, smartphones are dominating mobile traffic. They will account for 81 percent of total mobile traffic by 2020 -- up from 76 percent in 2015. The proliferation of mobile phones, including "phablets" (a hybrid blend of smartphone and tablet features), is increasing so rapidly that more people will have mobile phones (5.4 billion) than electricity (5.3 billion), running water (3.5 billion) and cars (2.8 billion) by 2020.

Mobile video will have the highest growth rate of any mobile application. Consumer and business users' demand for higher video resolution, more bandwidth, and processing speed will increase the use of 4G connected devices. 4G connectivity share is projected to surpass 2G by 2018 and 3G by 2020. 4G will represent more than 70 percent of all mobile traffic, and 4G connections will generate nearly six times more traffic per month than non-4G connections by 2020.

"With the ever-increasing billions of people and things that are being connected, mobility is the predominant medium that's enabling today's global digitization transformation," said Doug Webster, vice president of service provider marketing, Cisco. "Future mobile innovations in cellular, such as 5G, and Wi-Fi solutions will be needed to further address new scale requirements, security concerns, and user demands. IoT advancements will continue to fuel tangible benefits for people, businesses, and societies."

Mobile Data Traffic Projections and Trends:

Global Mobile Data Traffic Shows No Signs of Slowing Down

• By 2020:
  • Global mobile data traffic will reach 30.6 exabytes per month -- up from 3.7 exabytes in 2015.
  • Annual global mobile data traffic will reach 366.8 exabytes -- up from 44.2 exabytes in 2015.
• The forecast annual run rate of 366.8 exabytes of mobile data traffic for 2020 is equivalent to:
  • 120X more than all global mobile traffic generated just 10 years ago in 2010.
  • 81 trillion images (e.g., MMS or Instagram) -- 28 daily images per person on earth for a year.
  • 7 trillion video clips (e.g., YouTube) -- more than 2.5 daily video clips per person on earth for a year.
• From 2015 to 2020, global mobile data traffic will grow two times faster than global fixed IP traffic.
• In 2015, 51 percent of total mobile data traffic was offloaded; by 2020, 55 percent of total mobile data traffic will be offloaded.
• By 2020, over 75 percent of the world's mobile data traffic will be video. 
  

Mobile Devices and Connections Are Getting Smarter

• There will be 11.6 billion mobile-ready devices/connections -- including 8.5 billion personal mobile devices and 3.1 billion M2M connections -- up from 7.9 billion total mobile-ready devices and M2M connections in 2015.
• Globally, 67 percent of mobile devices/connections will be 'smart' by 2020 -- up from 36 percent in 2015.
• Globally, 98 percent of mobile data traffic will come from 'smart' devices/connections by 2020 -- up from 89 percent in 2015.
• Smartphones, laptops, and tablets will drive about 92 percent of global mobile data traffic by 2020 -- down from 94 percent in 2015. M2M traffic will represent 7 percent of global mobile data traffic by 2020 -- up from 3 percent in 2015; while basic handsets will account for 1 percent of global mobile data traffic by 2020 -- down from 3 percent in 2015.
• By 2020:
  • 66 percent of mobile devices/connections will be IPv6-capable -- up from 36 percent in 2015.
  • IPv6 traffic will be 54 percent of total mobile data traffic -- up from 13 percent in 2015. 
    

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Connections and Wearable Devices Continue to Rise M2M refers to applications that enable wireless and wired systems to communicate with other devices of the same ability (e.g., GPS/navigation, asset tracking, utility meters, security/surveillance video, healthcare monitoring, et al.). Wearable devices can be worn (e.g., smart watches and health monitors) and communicate to the network either directly via embedded cellular connectivity or through another device (primarily a smartphone) via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc. Wearable devices are a subset of the M2M category in the forecast.

• By 2020, M2M connections will represent 26.4 percent of mobile-connected devices -- up from 7.7 percent in 2015.
• By 2020, M2M connections will generate 6.7 percent of total mobile traffic -- up from 2.7 percent in 2015.
• Global wearables will grow six-fold from 2015 to 2020.
• By 2020, there will be more than 600 million wearable devices in use, up from nearly 97 million in 2015. 
  

Mobile Network Speeds and 4G Connection Growth

• Average global mobile network speeds will increase 3.2 fold from 2015 (2.0 Mbps) to 2020 (6.5 Mbps). Global 4G adoption is the primary catalyst for mobile speed improvements.
• By 2020:
  • 4G connections will account for 40.5 percent of all mobile connections -- up from 13.7 percent in 2015.
  • 3G connections will account for 38.7 percent of all mobile connections -- up from 33.7 percent in 2015.
  • 2G connections will account for 13.5 percent all mobile connections -- down from 52.3 percent in 2015.
• 4G traffic will grow 13-fold from 2015 to 2020.
• By 2020, 4G connections will account for 72 percent of total mobile data traffic -- up from 47 percent of total mobile data traffic in 2015. 
  

Wi-Fi Hotspots Are Growing

• Globally, total Wi-Fi hotspots, including home spots, will grow 7X from 2015 (64 million) to 2020 (432 million). Globally, home spots will grow from 57 million (2015) to 423 million (2020).
• In 2015, monthly Wi-Fi offload traffic (3.9 exabytes) exceeded monthly mobile/cellular traffic (3.7 exabytes) for the first time.
• By 2020, 38.1 exabytes Wi-Fi offload traffic will be generated each month, continuing to exceed projected monthly mobile/cellular traffic (30.6 exabytes). 
  

Voice-over-Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) Primed for GrowthGiven the growth and mobile networking role of Wi-Fi technologies, this year's study again compares VoWi-Fi to other mobile voice services. Previous VoWi-Fi offerings had limitations that affected adoption and end-user experiences. Today's carrier-grade VoWi-Fi services can be delivered to non-SIM devices, such as Wi-Fi-only tablets.

• By 2016, VoWi-Fi will exceed VoLTE in the number of minutes used per year.
• By 2018, VoWi-Fi will exceed VoIP in the number of minutes of used per year.
• By 2020, VoWi-Fi minutes of use will account for half -- 53 percent -- of all mobile IP voice traffic.
• By 2020, the number of Wi-Fi-capable tablets and PCs (1.7 billion) will be more than three times the number of cellular-capable tablets and PCs (548 million). 
  

Regional Mobile Data Traffic Growth Rates (2015-2020)1. The Middle East and Africa (15-fold growth) 
2. Asia-Pacific (9-fold growth)
3. Central and Eastern Europe (8-fold growth) 
4. Latin America (8-fold growth) 
5. Western Europe (6-fold growth)
6. North America (6-fold growth)

Cisco Mobile VNI Forecast MethodologyThe Cisco® VNI Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast (2015-2020) relies upon independent analyst forecasts and real-world mobile data usage studies. Upon this foundation are layered Cisco's own estimates for mobile application adoption, minutes of use and transmission speeds. Key enablers such as mobile broadband speed and device computing power are also factored into Cisco mobile VNI projections and findings. A detailed methodology description is included in the complete report (see link below).

Editor's Notes Cisco also welcomes press, analysts, bloggers, service providers, regulators and other interested parties to use and reference our research with proper attribution, such as "Source: Cisco Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2015-2020."

Cisco defines the following terms:

• Cellular Traffic: comes from a cellular or radio network connection -- 2G, 3G and 4G.
• Wi-Fi Offload Traffic: refers to traffic from dual mode devices (supports cell and Wi-Fi connectivity, excluding laptops) over Wi-Fi/small cell networks. Offloading occurs at the user/device level when one switches from a cellular connection to Wi-Fi/small cell access.
• Fixed/Wi-Fi Traffic: comes from a wireless connection enabled by some fixed network source, such as a residential Wi-Fi router or public hotspot. 
  

Images and Video

• 2G, 3G, and 4G Mobile Network Shifts (2015-2020).
• Infographic: Cisco Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update (2015-2020) 
  

Additional Supporting Resources

• Cisco Visual Networking Index home page
• Cisco Visual Networking Index Mobile Data Traffic blog post: "Major Mobile Milestones - The Last 15 Years, and the Next Five"
• Read the complete Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2015-2020 white paper.
• Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Q&A, 2015-2020
• Learn more about the free Cisco Visual Networking Index resources
• See the latest Cisco Data Meter results worldwide: http://ciscovni.com/data-meter/index.html
• Follow us on our LinkedIn page for targeted updates and announcements
• For more information about Cisco's service provider news and activities visit the SP360 Blog or follow us on Twitter @CiscoVNI.
• Cisco Service Provider SlideShare presentations
• Cisco Service Provider Mobility Community
• Subscribe to Cisco's SP360 feed 
  

See how the rapid evolution of mobile services to a virtualized cloud environment creates more than $500B in new opportunity by 2019. You can find out more using our Monetization and Optimization Index (MOI). And you can use it to forecast your specific market in cloud, mobile or video services.

Source: Cisco Systems

Intel IoT Platform

The Intel® IoT Platform is an end-to-end reference model and family of products from Intel that works with third-party solutions to provide a foundation for seamlessly and securely connecting devices, delivering trusted data to the cloud, and delivering value through analytics.

See the infographic version at

Future Internet of Things Networks

What does the future hold for Internet of Things (IoT) networks?

The GSMA is working to establish common capabilities among mobile operators to enable a network that supports value creation for all stakeholders.

These capabilities include security, billing and charging and device management, all of which can enhance the Internet of Things by enabling the development of new services. Through the provision of these value added services, operators can move beyond connectivity and act as a trusted partner for their customers. Operator capabilities need to be tailored for the emergent M2M business model, building a trusted infrastructure that all stakeholders can rely on – and profit from.

Below, you can find our Future Networks Roadmap which contains key IoT milestones, GSMA papers and revenue opportunities.

How can Internet of Things (IoT) devices and apps communicate safely via the mobile network?

The Internet of Things is dependent on the efficient and intelligent use of the mobile network. The GSMA develops connection efficiency guidelines ensuring that IoT device and application developers can follow a common approach to create efficient, trusted and reliable IoT services that can scale as the market grows.

The GSMA has worked with its ecosystem partners to establish the GSMA IoT Device Connection Efficiency Guidelines for how machines should communicate via the mobile network in the most intelligent and efficient way. The connectivity of billions of IoT devices in a scalable network depends on all stakeholders following a common approach, ensuring everyone can enjoy the benefits of efficient connectivity.

see more at 

Microsoft creates Azure hub for Internet of Things

Microsoft has put its new Azure IoT hub on general availability. In a statement, it claims the new system will be a simple bridge between its customers’ devices with their systems in the cloud. It claims that the new preconfigured IoT offering, when used with the Azure IoT Suite, can be used to create a machine to machine network and a storage system for its data in minutes.

The new Azure IoT Hub promises ‘secure, reliable two-way communication from device to cloud and cloud to device’. It uses the open protocols widely adopted in machine to machine technology, such as MQTT, HTTPS and AMQPS. Microsoft claims the IoT Hub will easily integrate with other Azure services like Azure Machine Learning and Azure Stream Analytics. The Machine Learning service uses algorithms in an attempt to spot patterns (such as unusual activity, hacking attempts or commercial trends) that might be useful to data scientists. Azure Stream Analytics allows data scientists and decision makers to act on those insights in real time, through a system with the capacity to simultaneously monitor millions of devices and take automatic action.

Microsoft launched the Azure IoT Suite in September 2015 with a pledge to guarantee standards through its Certified for IoT programme, promising to verify partners that work with operating systems such as Linux, mbed, RTOS and Windows. Microsoft claims its initial backers were Arduino, Beagleboard, Freescale, Intel, Raspberry Pi, Samsung and Texas Instruments. In the three months since the IoT Suite’s launch it has added ‘nearly 30’ more partners, it claims, notably Advantech, Dell, HPE, and Libelium.

“IoT is poised for dramatic growth in 2016 and we can’t wait to see what our customers and partners will continue to build on our offerings. We’re just getting started,” wrote blog author Sam George, Microsoft’s partner director for Azure IoT.

Source: www.businesscloudnews.com

Weightless-P moves the LPWAN game on

Whatever you thought was possible, think again. Weightless is reimagining IoT connectivity with an entirely new open standard technology.

Other technologies force you to compromise on cost, range, power consumption, network capacity, QoS, data rate, efficiency, reliability, flexibility, security and features. Brand new Weightless-P is different, it will change the Internet of Things forever...

Click on the orange buttons below for detailed technical information

What is it?

Weightless-P is an ultra high performance LPWAN connectivity technology for the Internet of Things. It will use a narrow band modulation scheme offering a bidirectional communications capability to enable unrivalled quality of service (QoS) and add on functionality. The Standard will provide fully acknowledged 2-way communications offering both uplink and downlink capabilities and best in class QoS required for the stringent industrial IoT sector.

Weightless-P will offer the promised performance, network reliability and security characteristics of 3GPP carrier grade solutions but significantly earlier than these technologies are likely to come on line. In addition the Standard will enable substantially lower costs, comparable to other LPWAN technologies, and less than 100uW power consumption in idle state compared to more than 3mW for the best cellular technologies.

Key characteristics

Excellent capacity and scalability for IoT deployment

• FDMA+TDMA in 12.5kHz narrow band channels offer optimal capacity for uplink-dominated traffic from a very large number of devices with moderate payload sizes
• Operates over the whole range of license-exempt sub-GHz ISM/SRD bands for global deployment: 169/433/470/780/868/915/923MHz
• Flexible channel assignment for frequency re-use in large-scale deployments
• Adaptive data rate from 200bps to 100kbps to optimise radio resource usage depending on device link quality
• Transmit power control for both downlink and uplink to reduce interference and maximize network capacity
• Time-synchronised base stations for efficient radio resource scheduling and utilisation

Bidirectional

• Supports both network-originated and device-originated traffic
• Paging capability
• Low latency in both uplink and downlink
• Fast network acquisition
• Forward Error Correction (FEC)
• Automatic Retransmission Request (ARQ)
• Adaptive Channel Coding (ACC)
• Handover
• Roaming
• Cell re-selection

Long range

• Lower data rates with channel coding provide similar link budget to other LPWAN technologies
• 2km in urban environment

Industrial-grade reliability

• Fully acknowledged communications
• Auto-retransmission upon failure
• Frequency and time synchronisation
• Supports narrowband channels (12.5KHz) with frequency hopping for robustness to multi-path and narrowband interference
• Channel coding
• Supports licensed spectrum operation

Ultra-low energy consumption

• GMSK and offset-QPSK modulation for optimal power amplifier efficiency
• Interference-immune offset-QPSK modulation using Spread Spectrum for improved link quality in busy radio environments
• Transmit power up to 17dBm to allow operation from coin cell batteries
• Adaptive transmit power and data rate to maximise battery-life
• Power consumption in idle state when stationary below 100uW

Secure and efficient networking

• Authentication to the network
• AES-128/256 encryption
• Radio resource management and scheduling across the overall network to ensure quality-of-service to all devices
• Support for over-the-air firmware upgrade and security key negotiation or replacement
• Fast network acquisition and frequency/time synchronisation

Low cost and complexity

• Using standard GMSK and offset-QPSK modulation channels ensures broad availability of hardware and no dependency on a single vendor
• Much leaner and optimised protocol ensures reduced system complexity and cost compared to cellular M2M or forthcoming NB-IOT
• Limited additional complexity to enable quasi-symmetric bidirectional communication
• Maximal transmit power of 17dBm allows for integrated power amplifier

Open standard

• Brings the reliability and performance of cellular technologies at a fraction of the cost by avoiding any legacy or backward-compatibility concerns
• Ensures interoperability between the manufacturers
• Provides for multivendor support to stimulate ongoing innovation and minimise end user costs
• Royalty free IP minimises production costs

Source: Weightless.org

RPMA Technology

RPMA, or Random Phase Multiple Access, technology is a combination of state of the art technologies designed specifically and exclusively for wireless machine-to-machine communication.When designing RPMA, each technology choice was made to guarantee that devices on our network could be untouched for decades. We began with the goal of designing wireless network technology perfectly suited for the needs of machine communication on the Internet of Things. Often this involved questioning the assumptions that others accepted, and that is what led to the disruptive innovations that comprise RPMA. We pursued and created a technology that provides unprecedented coverage, unlimited capacity and scalability, extreme battery life, full-featured value, and decades of network longevity.
Any serious Internet of Things wireless network provider must be prepared for the projected tens of billions of devices that it must serve. One key feature behind our technology is immense capacity and scalability. Because of the enormous number of devices projected to need connectivity, capacity is a primary driver behind network choice. And we know that scalability cannot be in the millions, but must be in the tens of billions as the number of devices connecting to the Internet of Things grows. Any network should be prepared to answer exactly how their technology can scale. If a network cannot scale to the billions, then its only choice is to change technologies, and that means sunsetting old technologies. That’s why we designed our network to scale in a truly unlimited way. As more devices need connection, Ingenu’s RPMA is ready with more capacity.
Capacity is useless if devices have no coverage, and RPMA can easily cover 300 square miles per tower in real world conditions. This is an unheard-of amount of coverage. We were so intent on offering incredible coverage that we designed our system so that in free space, it can cover a ridiculous (but nonetheless true) minimum of 2,000 square miles. In addition to broad coverage, we wanted our network to penetrate where our customers’ devices are, even underground, through concrete, or inside dense buildings.RPMA provides broad, deep coverage in a way nobody has done before.

Source: Ingenu

Harmonizing the industry on a narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) specification

“The battle lines are being drawn for the future of cellular IoT…” is what the headlines read going into the 3^rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) radio access network (RAN) Plenary meeting held earlier this month in Phoenix. The group was meeting to discuss, amongst other things, the important topic of how to further evolve cellular technologies to meet the connectivity needs of the rapidly growing Internet of Things (IoT).

At Qualcomm, we have been talking about the importance of cellular technologies increating a connectivity fabric for everything—leveraging the ubiquitous coverage, reliability, and scale of cellular, seamlessly interworking with short-range wireless technologies, like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, to offer a rich and varied set of IoT services. We all know how great cellular technologies like 4G LTE are for delivering high-performance mobile broadband experiences on our smartphone. And now the 3GPP is working on various initiatives to optimize (cost, power, coverage) cellular technologies for the small, sporadic data transmissions common in the Internet of utility meters, object trackers, fitness devices, and other “Things.”

Last year we introduced LTE-M (enhanced Machine-Type Communications) which will deliver a suite of features, as part of Release 13 of the 3GPP standard, to lower power consumption, reduce device complexity/cost, and provide deeper coverage to reach challenging locations (e.g., deep inside buildings). Beyond LTE-M, the 3GPP has been also investigating a new cellular technology to scale even further down in complexity and power—addressing the low throughput IoT applications sometimes referred to as Low Power Wide Area (LPWA).

Which leads us back to the important 3GPP Plenary meeting earlier this month, where competing technology proposals were on the table for addressing these low-throughput IoT services with a narrowband technology. On one side, was the potential to maximize cost and power savings by delivering a clean-slate design. And on the other, was maximizing reuse and coexistence with today’s LTE Advanced technology and deployments. At risk—fragmentation—with potentially two competing standards in the market for cellular IoT. Or even worse— a stalemate—where this new radio technology, critical to the growth of cellular in IoT, was delayed to future 3GPP Releases.

But luckily this story has a happy ending, and the group was able to come up with a harmonized technology proposal with very broad industry support as can be seen from the number of companies supporting the approved Release 13 Work Item (3GPP RP-151621). As Dino Flore, Senior Director of Technical Standards at Qualcomm and the Chairman of the 3GPP RAN stated, “It took us some twists and turns to get there. But we have now set a clear path in Release 13 to meet the needs of the 3GPP industry to further address the promising IoT market.”

But the reality is this story’s happy ending is no luck at all. It took a lot of lengthy discussions across the entire ecosystem represented at the 3GPP Plenary meeting. And Qualcomm, with significant technology positions on all options, played a central role in this harmonization. The resulting new narrowband radio technology, NB-IOT, will provide improved indoor coverage, support of massive number of low-throughput Things, low-delay sensitivity, ultra-low device cost, lower device power consumption, and optimized network architecture. The technology can be deployed in-band, utilizing resource blocks within normal LTE carrier, or in the unused resource blocks within a LTE carrier’s guard-band, or standalone for deployments in dedicated spectrum. The technology is also particularly suitable for the refarming of GSM channels.

There are still some details on the technology proposal to be finalized. NB-IOT will deliver narrowband operation with 180 kHz bandwidth for both the downlink and uplink. The downlink will be OFDMA with two options for numerology being considered. On the uplink, two different options are being considered—FDMA with GMSK modulation and/or SC-FDMA. The 3GPP expects to finalize these options in the RAN Plenary meeting planned for December in order to ensure NB-IOT is a part of the Release 13 specification expected to be finalized early in 2016.

Together this new NB-IOT technology and LTE-M nicely rounds out the 3GPP cellular IoT portfolio as shown below with various ongoing initiatives that scale cellular technologies to connect a much wider variation of consumer and enterprise use cases. The limitations for NB-IOT in scaling up in data rate, latency, and mobility make it very complementary with LTE-M. This now provides 3GPP operators with a portfolio of cellular technologies that provide globally standardized, reliable (based on licensed spectrum) solutions to meet a rich and varied set of IoT services. Furthermore, these solutions are being designed so that operators can maximally reuse their deployed network infrastructure and will not have to deploy a brand new network to address the IoT market.

Scaling cellular to connect a wider range of consumer & enterprise use cases

Source: Qualcomm OnQ Blog

Swisstraffic BLUESCAN (english- français)

LPWAN technology creates opportunity for chip industry

The “Internet of Things: will connect billions of wireless devices in the years ahead, but only a small subset of those things will be connected using cellular networks. According to the Ericsson Mobility Report, a projected 28 billion devices will be connected by 2021, but just 1.5 billion of those will be noncommunication devices on cellular networks. Another 10.7 billion will be connected “things” that use noncellular networks.

Low-power wide-area networks are emerging as the carriers of more and more IoT traffic. These transmit data on low-band spectrum using inexpensive, low-power modems with batteries that can last for years. They are well suited for sensors that need to transmit small amounts of data on a regular basis and operate for long periods of time without maintenance.

For traditional wireless carriers that want to extend their networks to the “Internet of Things,” LPWANs are a potential threat. But for the companies that make chips for mobile devices, LPWANs represent a clear opportunity.

“These are outlets for the semiconductor suppliers, and they are obviously very keen to see those develop,” said analyst Robin Duke-Woolley, CEO of Beecham Research. “There are a number of competing technologies in the LPWAN area – about five different technologies – of which Sigfox and LoRa are the two main ones at the moment.”

Sigfox has already launched low-power wide-area networks in several European countries and has plans to launch networks in ten U.S. cities. The company has developed its own protocols, which are used by several chip partners including Atmel and Texas Instruments.

The LoRa Alliance is a consortium of companies developing IoT devices and equipment based on silicon solutions from Semtech. Within its first year of operation, the LoRa Alliance has attracted more than 700 members. In addition to Semtech, Arizona’s Microchip Technology as well as chip developers Gemalto of The Netherlands and Nemeus of France are members of the LoRa Alliance.

In the U.S., Intel is determined to be a leader rather than a follower in IoT. Intel was one of the first to launch an IoT gateway, a solution that includes an interface to a device that collects data, a connection to a wireless network, and intelligence to translate and analyze data.

Source: Intel

“New alternative IoT networks based on Sigfox, LoRA, Ingenu or other low-power, low-bandwidth technologies will be supported by gateway manufacturers in a similar manner to today’s 3G and 4G solutions.” said Mike Krell, lead IoT analyst for Moor Insights & Strategy. “We have already seen commitments from major radio manufacturers to provide chipsets and modules, and I expect if we see real large-scale deployment, we will see even more jump on board.”

Source: Opensensors.io

Source : RCR Wireless

What Is SigFox?

Specifically, SigFox sets up antennas on towers (like a cell phone company), and receives data transmissions from devices like parking sensors or water meters. 

These transmissions use frequencies that are unlicensed, which in the US is the 915 MHz ISM band; the same frequency a cordless phone uses. (Europe has a narrower band around 868 MHz, and most of the world has some version of this band either like the US or Europe, all with different rules that govern their use.)

SigFox wireless systems send very small amounts of data (12 bytes) very slowly (300 baud) using standard radio transmission methods (phase-shift keying – DBPSK – going up and frequency-shift keying – GFSK – coming down). 

The long range is accomplished as a result of very long and very slow messages. Information theory says that the slower you transmit, the easier it is to “hear” your message.
This technology is a good fit for any application that needs to send small, infrequent bursts of data. Things like basic alarm systems, location monitoring, and simple metering are all examples of one-way systems that might make sense for this network. In these networks, the signal is typically sent a few times to “ensure” the message goes through. While this works, there are some limitations, such as shorter battery life for battery-powered applications, and an inability to guarantee a message is actually received by the tower.

SigFox has faced challenges in moving their technology into the US market. Under FCC Part 15, the law that governs the use of the unlicensed radio spectrum, the maximum time a transmission can be on the air is 0.4 seconds. Since SigFox transmissions are 3 seconds or so, this has required a new architecture, and is the likely reason they have been slower to deploy in the US than promised. The frequency band in the US is also subject to much higher levels of interference than the band SigFox uses in Europe.


Source: LinkLabs

LTE-M & 2 Other 3GPP IoT Technologies To Get Familiar With

3GPP—the industry expert behind the standardization of cellular systems—has recently introduced three new standards: LTE-MTC (also called LTE-M), Narrowband (NB) LTE-M, and Narrowband (NB) IoT. These are the cellular industry’s attempts at allowing devices that operate on carrier networks to be less expensive and more power efficient, thus making an impact on the Internet of Things (also called LTE IoT in the cellular space) andmachine-to-machine (M2M) communications space. They are offered as an answer to the LoRa, LoRaWAN, and SIGFOX-type technologies. Each of these standards is fighting to become dominant, and they’re all a little different from one another. We’ll describe those differences and explain what you need to know about the technology and uses.

LTE-MTC (LTE-M)

LTE-M, which is an abbreviated version of LTE-MTC (or “machine-type communications”), is a part of 3GPP’s release 12 and 13, and it is still under consideration. The LTE channel is made up of resource blocks of about 230 kHz of spectrum, and LTE-M is part of the 1.4 mHz block, comprised of six resource blocks. LTE-M is more energy efficient because of its extended discontinuous repetition cycle (DRX), which means the endpoint can communicate with the tower or the network on how often it will wake up to listen for the downlink. LTE-PSM from Rel 12 (power-saving mode) had a similar feature, but extended DRX was created specifically for LTE-M in Rel 13.

The advantage of LTE-MTC for M2M communications is that it works within the normal construct of LTE networks. In other words, a cellular carrier like AT&T  only has to upload new baseband software onto its base stations to turn on LTE-M and won’t have to spend any money on new antennas. It’s also five times simpler than a category 4 receiver—like that found in user equipment like a cell phone—because it needs only to understand and digitize 1.4 mHz of the channel instead of 20 mHz.

LTE-M has a little higher data rate than NB-LTE-M and NB-IoT, but it is able to transmit fairly large chunks of data. Thus, it can be used for applications such as tracking objects, wearables, energy management, utility metering, and city infrastructure.

NB-LTE-M & NB-IoT

Like LTE-M, NB-LTE-M is another overlay of existing LTE structure. It is created by dedicating existing resource blocks to IoT traffic, through using smaller channels to make simpler receivers. NB-LTE-M proposes to refarm GSM by using a single ~200 kHz resource block.

NB-LTE-M is unique in that instead of using 1.4 mHz spectrum and six resource blocks, it uses only one LTE resource block. This gives the user an effective throughput of about 200 kbps down and 144 kbps up.

NB-IoT is another 3GPP Rel 13 proposal which is not based on LTE, but instead on a DSSS modulation similar to the old Neul version of Weightless-W. The mode of complexity is even simpler than NB-LTE-M, and the chipsets will likely be lower cost. NB-IoT proponents, including Huawei, Ericsson, Qualcomm, and Vodafone, are actively involved in putting this standard together.

The problem with NB-IoT is its difficulty with deployability. Since it isn’t a part of LTE, it either needs to operate in a side band using different software—which may be costly for the carriers—or it needs to be deployed in deprecated GSP spectrum.

COMPARISON OF NARROWBAND TECHNOLOGIES

The real question here is which narrowband standard will be the predominant standard for smaller channel cellular IoT. Qualcomm, for example, thinks NB-IoT and LTE-M should be used, but NB-LTE-M should not . NB-IoT is “newer,” and potentially less expensive, but the carriers will not necessarily be able to use the same LTE radios they use for their data networks today.

NB-IoT and NB-LTE-M have differences from a technological standpoint, but they are being created to service similar use cases. For instance, they will both be ideal environmental monitoring, smart buildings, and sensor data monitoring. But, if both technologies are approved, cellular carriers will have to choose which technology to deploy to service narrowband applications. This may lead to some fracturing in the cell world. We’ll start seeing which of these standards is dominant in coming months and years.

Conclusion

If you need to go to market today with your solution, these are absolutely not available. The chipsets—if they exist—are in the prototype stage, and no networks currently support them. They likely won’t be rolled out for years.

If you’re looking to go to market soon, there are plenty of solutions that provide low power, wide-area network (LPWAN) coverage where you need it—like Symphony Link. But keep your eye on this space; there very well may be a cellular option that has the same cost and power performance as many LPWANs very soon.

Source: Link-Labs