Wireless communication technology for the Internet of Things

The Internet of things wireless communication technology, mainly divided into two categories: ZigBee, WiFi, Bluetooth, Z-wave and other short-distance communication technology, the other is Lpwan (low-power wide-area Network, low-power WAN), that is, WAN communication technology. Lpwa can be divided into two categories: one is working in the unlicensed spectrum of Lora, Sigfox and other technologies, the other is working under the authorization spectrum, 3GPP support 2/3/4g Cellular communication technology, such as EC-GSM, LTE cat-m, NB-IoT, etc.

Classification according to the network transmission rate, as shown in figure.

From the above figure, high-speed business mainly uses 3G, 4G technology, medium-rate business mainly uses GPRS technology. Low-rate business is not very good cellular technology to meet, but it has a wide range of application scenarios, in many cases can only be used to support the use of GPRS technology.

So based on a keen insight into the trend and demand for cellular internet of Things, at the beginning of 2013, Huawei and the industry consensus operators, equipment manufacturers, chip manufacturers to carry out extensive and in-depth needs and technical research, and quickly reached a consensus to promote the development of narrow-band cellular IoT industry, NB-IoT research officially began. The specific evolution history of the NB-IoT standard. You keep looking down.

Evolution History of NB-IoT standards
In early 2013, Huawei and related industry manufacturers, operators to develop narrowband cellular internet of Things, and named Lte-m (LTE for machine to machine). In the choice of technical scheme of LTE-M, there are two main ideas at that time: one is based on the existing GSM evolution thought, and the other is the new way of thinking that Huawei put forward, when the name is nb-m2m.

May 2014, supported by Vodafone, China Mobile, orange,telecom Italy, Huawei, Nokia and other companies, si "Cellular System support for ultralow complexity and low Throughput Internet of Things "in the 3GPP Geran Workgroup project, LTE-M's name evolved into cellular IoT, abbreviated as Ciot.

In April 2015, the PCG (Project coordination Group) meeting made an important decision: Ciot after Geran finished Si, the WI stage to the RAN project and complete the relevant agreement.

In May 2015, Huawei and Qualcomm, on the basis of consensus, announced a converged solution, that is, the upstream uses the FDMA multiple access method, the downlink uses the OFDM multiple access method, the fusion scheme name is called Nb-ciot (Narrow Band Cellular IoT).

On August 10, 2015, at the last meeting of the Geran Si phase, Ericsson joined several companies in proposing the concept of Nb-lte (Narrow Band LTE).

In September 2015, after intense discussion at the RAN#69 meeting, the parties finally reached a consensus that the integration of the Nb-ciot and Nb-lte two technical solutions formed the NB-IoT WID. Nb-ciot evolved to NB-IoT (Narrow Band IoT).

June 16, 2016, NB-IoT R core protocol in RAN1, RAN2, RAN3, RAN4 Four working groups have been frozen. Performance specifications in 3GPP RAN4 Working Group, scheduled to end in September. Performance Specifications NB-IoT is in parallel with EMTC and is scheduled to be completed simultaneously.

Practical application of NB-IoT solutions
Here are a few NB-IoT related applications that give you a deeper understanding of what it means.

(1) Huawei/China Unicom's NB-IoT smart Parking Solution: This smart parking system based on the Huawei NB-IoT module will enable the ability to pre-order, sublet parking spaces, and the low power consumption and high penetration capability make this solution more reliable. At present, the parking system has been in Shanghai Disney trial commercial.

(2) ZTE/China Mobile Intelligent Manhole Cover: The program through the full supervision of the state of the manhole cover, the well cover is opened, displacement, etc., can achieve timely warning. NB-IoT technology has the characteristics of low cost, wide coverage, low power and large connection, which can effectively improve the coverage area of intelligent manhole cover monitoring system, eliminate cover dead angle and reduce construction and maintenance cost.

(3) China Mobile/Ericsson/Intel's Environmental testing application: Using Intel's newest NB-IoT chip (XMM7115), it can monitor the environment's PM value, temperature, humidity, light sense brightness and so on in real time.

NB-IoT development and challenges
First of all, the advantages and the value of NB-IoT solutions: 1, covering wide and deep: enhanced 20DB+;2 than GPRS coverage, low power consumption: Based on AA batteries, the service life can exceed 10 years, 3, low cost, 4, large connection: 50k+ user capacity/200khz community.

With these advantages, NB-IoT technology attracts the pro-gaze of the world's leading operators and equipment companies, and with the freezing of standards, NB-IoT will be commercially available this September. China Unicom plans to advance the commercial deployment of NB-IoT in key cities by early next year, according to reports. In addition, MIIT also held a narrowband IoT work promotion meeting in April to build a scale field experiment based on NB-IoT standards at the end of the year. According to the relevant market research, the end of this year, the world will have 50 mainstream operators to support Nb-iot,nb-iot future will cover the IoT connectivity of 1/4, to 2020, the device can reach 7 billion connections.

As a new standard technology, NB-IoT is under competitive pressure from Sigfox and Lora Technology (the industry chain is more mature and commercial application is earlier). However, Sigfox and Lora belong to the non-authorized frequency band, not be favored by operators and equipment vendors. Although the NB-IoT market has a promising future, there is also a price war behind the hot. NB-IoT costs are extremely low, costs will drop to $1 in large-scale applications, and a single connection module remains at $5. While Bluetooth, Thread, ZigBee three standard chip price of about $2, only to support one of the standard chip price is less than $1, this price gap allows enterprises to think about NB-IoT has to consider the cost advantage problem, although operators are actively promoting, Finally, there is a long way to go before we actually realize the product of technology.