Wireless communication
IoT technologies
PV284
Overview I
1. Introduction to Wireless Networks
1.1 Basic introduction to radio communication and principles
1.2 Band Frequencies – Spectrum available for IoT applications
2. Proximity IoT
2.1 NFC/RFID
3. Short-range IoT
3.1 2.4 GHz ISM Band – Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1)
3.2 IEEE 802.15.4
3.3 802.15.4 – Wireless Thread
3.4 802.15.4 – ZigBee
3.5 802.15.4 – 6LoWPAN
3.6 802.11p – Dedicated Short Range Communication, DSRC
3.7 Wired IoT – just a note
4. Medium-range IoT
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Overview II
4.1 Wirepas
4.2 WiFi, Wifi HaLow (802.11ah)
5. Long-range IoT
5.1 Cellular
5.1.1 Cellular IoT – EC-GSM IoT
5.1.2 Cellular IoT – eMTC/Cat-M1/Cat-M/LTE-M
5.1.3 Cellular IoT – NB-IoT
6. 5G IoT, 6G
6.1 Long-range IoT – non cellular
6.1.1 LoRa
6.1.2 Sigfox
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This presentation is intended to introduce IoT aspects, so it does not contain all the
details. Change of the content is reserved. The first part introduces the basic principles of
wireless communication to understand the terms used. The next part then contains a
presentation of IoT.
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Basic introduction to radio communication and principles
Knowledge of PV169 and PA151 is an advantage (Written in Czech only)
The wireless age, more than 1 and a half centuries have passed
• 1873 – James Clerk Maxwell, mathematical theory of electromagnetic waves
• 1887 – Heinrich Hertz, demonstration of the existence of electromagnetic waves
• 1901 – Guglielmo Marconi, wireless communication
• 1906 – wireless music streaming
• 1920 – Pitsburgh, radio broadcasting (radio)
• 1946 – USA, public mobile telephony network
• 1980 1G, 1990 – 2G, 2000 – 3G public mobile telephony networks
• 2002 – there are more mobile phones than fixed lines
• 202? 6G – Intelligent Mobile Networks
• Parallel development of MAN, LAN, PAN, sensor networks, IoT, ...
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Wireless Transmission
Data is transmitted by the propagation of electromagnetic waves in the environment.
Electromagnetic waves are characterized by three properties – wavelength, frequency and
speed of propagation
x
y
z
c
E
B
λ
c =
E
B
λ =
c
f
f =
c
λ
E = electric field (amplitude)
B = magnetic field (amplitude)
c = propagation speed in vacuum (3 × 108
m/s)
λ = wavelength
f = frequency 5/48
The basic concepts
Wavelength
Wavelength λ [m, cm, mm, ...] – the distance of the two nearest points of a wave
oscillating in phase
Frequency
Frequency f [Hz] – number of oscillations per second
Propagation speed
• In a vacuum, the elmag waves propagates at a speed of c = 3 × 108 m · s−1, i.e. 30
cm/ns
• In a transmission medium, the elmag waves propagates at a lower speed, depending
on the frequency
6/48
The basic concepts
Decibel
is the unit of measure of the ratio between 2 signal levels, decibel gain/loss (attenuation),
GdB=10 log10
Pin
Pout
, where P denotes power. The decibel is a relative measure, a
dimensionless unit, an abstract mathematical unit, not a physical unit. It expresses the
relative strength of a signal at two points or the relative strength of two signals
Radio propagation
is the behaviour of radio waves as a form of electromagnetic radiation affected by the
phenomena of reflection, refraction, diffraction, absorption, polarization, and scattering.
Radio propagation model
is an empirical mathematical formulation for the characterization of radio wave
propagation as a function of frequency, distance and other conditions (Friis transmission
equation, Egli models, ...) 7/48
The basic concepts
Bandwidth
as a property of the transmission medium the difference between the highest and lowest
frequencies that the medium transmits
Figure: Radio spectrum utilization. Resource: https://spektrum.ctu.cz/en/
8/48
ISO RM OSI, where the matter of wireless transmissions is
addressed
Layer Protocol data unit (PDU) Function
7 Application Distributed IT services, applications
6 Presentation Supports application independence on data representation (syntax)
5 Session
Data
Establishes, maintains and terminates connections (sessions)
between processes (applications)
4 Transport Segment, Datagram
Organizes data into/from transport (t)-segments. QoS transfers
between end nodes (flow control errors). Addresses processes
on the network node
3 Network Packet
Organizes t-segments into/from packets. Defines the packet flow
path between non-neighboring nodes.
2 Data link Frame
Organizes the bit stream into frames. Controls media access,
flow and error correction during frame transfer.
1 Physical Bit, Symbol
The transmission of a stream of bits through a channel
regardless of their meaning. Displays 1 and 0 to/from
signal elements. 9/48
Internet of Things, IoT
Primary target
• connect (to the Internet) all objects in the home, office, ...,
everywhere in everyday life that can transmit and receive information. Objects – end
devices, sensors, ...
• connect wirelessly
• IoT is changing the vision of sensor networks, these can still be
a closed network, but also be open to the Internet
It is not possible to directly integrate „small things“ into the Internet, they’re not
powerful enough to support TCP/IP. Specific gateways and techniques are being
developed to connect smart „garbage“ to the Internet.
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Internet of Things, IoT – application domains
The IoT technologies are used in process automation, home automation, smart cars,
decision analytics, smart grids, ...
• IoT Sensors - consist of sensors connected to circuit boards such as Arduino or Raspberry.
The circuit boards can be programmed to measure a range of data collected from a sensor
device such as temperature, humidity, pressure, vibration, ...
• IoT Tracking and Monitoring System – IoT asset tracking devices use GPS or radio frequency
(RF) to track and monitor properties. The smart devices can be used for long-range
identification and verification of assets.
• IoT Connected Factory – solution such as Azure IoT for management of industrial IoT devices.
The connected cloud software can be populated with different resources that allow control
of a range of devices.
• Smart Grid – is another industrial application of IoT. The grid allows real-time monitoring of
data regarding supply and demand of electricity. It involves the application of computer
intelligence for the efficient management of resources
• ...
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Internet of Things, IoT – application domains
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Band Frequencies – Spectrum available for IoT applications
IoT devices have a flexible range of both wired and wireless connectivity options. IoT
protocols mostly use ISM band frequencies of 433 MHz, 915 MHz, 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz.
• ISM – Industrial, Scientific and Medical frequency band. This is a band of radio and
microwave frequencies reserved and designated for industrial, scientific and medical
equipment that use RF
• The 2.4 GHz – the most common, no need for licensing devices to use it
• Other ISM frequencies – can be as high as 24.125 GHz or even as low as 13.56 MHz
depending on the location and local acceptance
Allocation of ISM radio frequencies is stipulated by the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU). ITU has documented a worldwide ISM allocation table which varies slightly
depending on the region
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Band Frequencies – Spectrum available for IoT applications
433 MHz
868 MHz
Bandwidth 0.5/1 MHz
Restric�ons 1% duty cycle
433 MHz
Bandwidth 0.5MHz
Restric�ons 1% duty cycle
433 MHz
915 MHz
Bandwidth 0.5/12 MHz
Restric�ons 1% duty
cycle / 400 ms
narrowband
433 MHz
Bandwidth 0.5 MHz
Restric�ons 1% duty
cycle
780 MHz
Bandwidth 1 MHz
Restric�ons 1% duty
cycle
915 MHz
Bandwidth 12 MHz
Restric�ons 400 ms narrowband
900 Band
Bandwidth None to 2 MHz
to 12 MHz
Restric�ons Not usable
To 0.5W to 4W
2.4 and 5 GHz
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IoT – Wireless Technologies
Proximity
WPAN
Wireless
Personal Area
Network
WLAN
Wireless
Local Area
Network
WNAN
Wireless
Neighborhood Area
Network
WWAN
Wireless
Wide Area
Network
Short range 10 – 100 m
Short/medium range 100 – 1000 m
Medium range ~ 5 – 10 km
Long rangeup to 100 km
?
NFC
RFID
Bluetooth LE
ZigBee
Thread (6LoWPAN)
Z-Wave
ANT+
WirelessHART
ISA100.11a (6loWPAN)
EnOcean
- and more
802.11a/b/g/n/ac
802.11af (white space)
802.11ah & 802.11p
Wi-SUN (6LoWPAN)
ZigBee-NAN (6LoWPAN)
Cellular
• 2G/3G/4G/5G
• LTE-MTC
Lower Power Wide Area (LPWAN)
• Sigfox
• LoRa
• Telensa
• PTC
• - and more IoT over
Non-
terrestrial
network
No stringent definition of what is considered WPAN, WLAN, WWAN. The figure shows a
not complete list of radio formats. Emerging IoT technologies. 15/48
NFC/RFID
• NFC/RFID is a short-range radio and standards-based wireless connectivity
technology that enables communication between devices held or positioned a
relatively short distance from one another
• NFC/RFID works over a distance of a few inches up to a meter
• The technology uses inductive coupling, a process that transfers energy through a
shared magnetic field between two devices
https://rfid.atlasrfidstore.com/hubfs/rfid-vs-nfc-infographic.jpg
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2.4 GHz ISM Band – Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1)
• PAN, WPAN wireless technology
• Universal short-range wireless connectivity, connects devices (gadgets) in a small
(personal) area up to 10 m
• Uses 2.45 GHz license-free band
• Connected devices can share speeds up to 2.1 Mbps or 24 Mbps
• Real time voice, data, video
• Ad hoc networking, complete elimination of any cabling
• Standardization of Bluetooth 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 4.0, latest 5.3 (2021) – improved channel
classification, improved encryption key size management
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Bluetooth Smart, Bluetooth 4.0, Bluetooth Low Energy
• Suitable standard for IoT
• Same band as Bt BR/EDR (Basic Rate/Enhanced Data Rate), 2.4 GHz
• 150 m range in an open field
• Output power only 10 mW vs. 100 mW for Bt BR/EDR
• New advertising mechanism for efficient device discovery
• New asynchronous connectionless MAC to provide low delay and fast transactions
• New generic attribute protocol to provide a simple client/server model
• New generic attribute profile to efficiently collect data from sensors
• Suitable for fitness devices, smart metering, healthcare devices
• Advantages – easy to implement, low power, powered by coin cell, longer battery life
• Limitations – small data packets
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IEEE 802.15.4
• a standard of inexpensive low speed „always present“ WSN
• defines physical layer and data link layer according to OSI, physical layer has multiple
variants (DSSS and QPSK/BPSK/ASK)
• for slow devices with low power consumption (battery for months to years), power
management ensures low power consumption
• in star topology can be used for collision-free communication real-time reservation
of TDM time slices other communications are handled by CSMA/CA contention,
error-free data receiving is optionally ensured by acknowledgement
• communication can be secured (encryption, CRC, ...)
• distance between nodes up to few tens of meters, speed up to 250 kb/s
• communication frequency bands 868 MHz, 915 MHz and 2.4 GHz
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802.15.4 – Wireless Thread
• IPv6-based wireless protocol, IP-based
• run by a board of directors that includes representatives from Google, Apple,
Amazon, Samsung SmartThings, Qualcomm, NXP, Assa Abloy, Lutron, and more
• uses the 802.15.4 radio technology
• similar to existing smart home protocols Zigbee and Z-Wave
• low-bandwidth devices, such as door locks and motion sensors
• Advantages – lower latency in opposite to Zigbee and Bluetooth, especially in large
networks with many devices, it doesn’t need a central hub or bridge
• Limitations – Not for high-bandwidth use
https://www.threadgroup.org/support#specifications
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802.15.4 – ZigBee
• Standard Zigbee alliance (Honeywell, Emerson, Freescale, Texas Instuments, OKI, ...)
Defines a generic framework and application profiles
• Unlicensed bands including 2.4 GHz, 900 MHz and 868 MHz
• ZigBee 3.0, multiple network topologies, 128-bit AES encryption, DSSS up to 65,000
nodes per network
• Addition (extension) of 802.15.4 for routing, security, self-correction,
self-organization, and interfaces to applications on star or mesh networks
• Target – a network for networking applications with secure low-speed radio
communications, with the need for long battery life
• Advantages – low resource requirements – 32 kB ROM (4 kB for simple devices), 8
kB RAM (1 kB or less for simple devices), communicate data through noisy RF
environments
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6LoWPAN
IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN) provides the upper
layer system for use with low power wireless communications for IoT and M2M, originally
intended for 802.15.4, it is now used with many other wireless standards
• An open standard defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force, IETF in their
document RFC 6282 updated by RFC 8066
• Defined the encapsulation and compression mechanisms that enable the IPv6 data
to be carried of the wireless network
IPv6 – MTU at least 1280 bytes in length > IEEE802.15.4’s standard packet size of 127 octets
Solution – IPv6 nodes are given 128 bit addresses in a hierarchical manner. Devices may use either
of IEEE 64 bit extended addresses or 16 bit addresses that are unique within a PAN after devices
have associated. There is also a PAN-ID for a group of physically co-located IEEE802.15.4 devices
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802.11p – Dedicated Short Range Communication, DSRC
• based on IEEE 802.11p WLAN standards, called as Wireless Access in Vehicular
Environment (WAVE)
• working in the frequency range 5.850 - 5.925 GHz (with 75 MHz band ie 7 channel of
10 MHz each and 5 MHz reserved ) in USA and with 30 MHz in Europe
• low latency, Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I)
communication
• DSRC (WiFi based) is in use in Europe, Japan, USA. China is moving to use C-V2X
Rel.14/15 (LTE uplink).
• Vehicle Safety service, commerce transaction via cars, traffic management, etc, ...
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Wired IoT – just a note
IoT is not only wireless technology. IoT based on Ethernet technology is used in the
automotive industry to transport in-car data, poe remote cameras in public spaces,
connected FVE systems, etc ...
Examples:
• IEEE 802.3cg – runs over a single twisted pair. Enables a higher speed connection,
without the use of gateways, for field switches, sensors and actuators.
• IEEE 802.3bt – PoE standard can provide up to 100 W over the UTP cabling. PoE is
also critical to wireless access points and supporting Wi-Fi.
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Wirepas
• A low-power wireless connectivity protocol
• Three radio profiles – 5G Mesh, Mesh 2.4 GHz and Mesh Sub-GHz for massive indoor
or deep indoor applications ( unlicensed frequencies – 2.4 GHz, 865 MHz, 868 MHz,
870 MHz and 915 MHz)
• Combined time-division and multiple access (TDMA) and Frequency division multiple
access (FDMA) operation for efficient spectrum usage
• 5G Mesh
– non-cellular 5G connectivity network for enterprise IoT (5G Mash)
– free global dedicated spectrum at 1.9 GHz
– city-wide 5G network for other applications like parking and sewer monitoring
– Advantages – for massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC)
SDK available at https://developer.wirepas.com/support/home
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WiFi, Wifi HaLow (802.11ah)
• Referred as Long range, low power Wi-Fi for IoT – from the IoT perspective itself, as
Medium range
• Wi-Fi HaLow enables the low power connectivity necessary for applications including
sensor networks and wearables
• Sub-1 GHz spectrum operation, Narow band OFDM channels
• Several device power saving models, native IP support, latest Wi-Fi security
• Advantages – Long range: approx 1 km, penetration trough walls and other obstacles,
no need for proprietary hubs or gateways
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27/48
Low-Power Wide-Area technologies – LPWA
LPWA (Low-Power Wide-Area) Technologies: carry a very small data to a large distance
LPWA technologies may be categorized as :
• Cellular (3GPP) LPWA(N) (Networks) : Based on 3GPP Rel 13 onwards specifications,
cellular networks may have LTE MTC, NB-IoT, EC-GSM and 5G
• Non cellular (Non 3GPP) LPWA(N) (Networks) : LoRa, Sigfox, Weightless, RPMA and
others
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LPWA technologies – a bit of history
• 1990 - 2000s – AlarmNet – build by ADEMCO, a 900 MHz network to monitor alarm
panels. Owned by Honeywell.
• 1990 - 2000s – ARDIS – built specifically for data-only applications, wireless
wide-area network owned by Motorola in the 1980s
• late 1990s – migration to 2 G
• 2000s – 2 G, 3 G
• 2010s – ONRAMP, SIGFOX, CYCLEO
• 2014 - 2016 – LoRa, GENU, Waviot, LinkLabs, 3GPP
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LPWA technologies
Cellular LPWAN
NB-IoT, LTE-M
(Licensed)
Spread Spectrum (LoRa)
(License-free)
Spread Spectrum (LoRa)
Telegram Splitting
(License-free)
UNB (Sigfox)
(License-free)
Standardized
Proprietary
Public
Network
Private
Network
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LPWA technologies – cellular
LTE IoT
GSM IoT
Cat. 1 - 12
LPWA
Cat.NB1
Cat.M1
< 65 – 350 Kbps
Wide area coverage
< 10 – 600 Mbps
Performance and
mobility
< 70 Kbps
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NB-IoT vs LTE-M
https://www.gsma.com/iot/deployment-map/, 2022
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NB-IoT vs LTE-M – 3GPP progresses
LTE Cat 1 LTE Cat 1 bis
LTE-M
NB-IoT
EC-GSM-IoTLC-LTE/MTCe eMTC
LTE Cat 0 LTE Cat M1 LTE Cat M2 non-BL LTE Cat NB1 LTE Cat NB2
3GPP Release Release 8 Release 13 Release 12 Release 13 Release 14 Release 14 Release 13 Release 14 Release 13
Downlink Peak Rate 10 Mbit/s 10 Mbit/s 1 Mbit/s 1 Mbit/s ∼4 Mbit/s ∼4 Mbit/s 26 kbit/s 127 kbit/s
474 kbit/s (EDGE)
2 Mbit/s (EGPRS2B)
Uplink Peak Rate 5 Mbit/s 5 Mbit/s 1 Mbit/s 1 Mbit/s ∼7 Mbit/s ∼7 Mbit/s
66 kbit/s (multi-tone)
16.9 kbit/s (single-tone)
159 kbit/s
474 kbit/s (EDGE)
2 Mbit/s (EGPRS2B)
Latency 50–100 ms not deployed 10–15 ms 1.6–10 s 700 ms – 2 s
Number of Antennas 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1–2
Duplex Mode Full Duplex Full or Half Duplex Full or Half Duplex Full or Half Duplex Full or Half Duplex Half Duplex Half Duplex Half Duplex
Device Receive Bandwidth 1.4–20 MHz 1.4–20 MHz 1.4 MHz 5 MHz 5 MHz 180 kHz 180 kHz 200 kHz
Receiver Chains 2 (MIMO) 1 (SISO) 1 (SISO) 1 (SISO) 1 (SISO) 1 (SISO) 1 (SISO) 1–2
Device Transmit Power 23 dBm 23 dBm 23 dBm 20 / 23 dBm 20 / 23 dBm 20 / 23 dBm 20 / 23 dBm 14 / 20 / 23 dBm 23 / 33 dBm
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NB-IoT vs LTE-M – 3GPP progresses
https://enterpriseiotinsights.com, 2022
„Massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC) is one of three core 5G service areas. It has been created specifically to enable a huge volume of small data
packets to be collected from large numbers of devices, simultaneously. mMTC supports applications using Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, meaning that data can
be used to reduce energy consumption, make work more efficient, or improve our lives in other way – gsma.com“
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EC GSM IoT (formerly EC-EGPRS)
Extended Coverage GSM for Internet of Things – EC GSM IoT
• standardized and published in 3GPP Release 13
• it uses 2 G bands, licensed spectrum like GSM, 850 to 900 MHz, 1800 to 1900 MHz
• network infrastructure is backwards-compatible to previous releases to allow the
technology to be introduced into existing GSM networks
• There are four coverage classes supported by EC-GSM – CC1 - CC4 – 7 times increase
in Cell coverage
• Advantages – ∼10 years of operation with 5 Wh battery, variable data rates with
GMSK: 350 bps to 70 kbps, with 8PSK up to 240 kbps, low cost market, 50.000
devices per cell, improved security
• Smart cities & homes, Industrial automation, Wearables, Smart energy (meters with
strong coverage requirements and low power use), Intelligent transport systems
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Cellular IoT – eMTC/Cat-M1/Cat-M/LTE-M
• LTE-M is the industry term for the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) machine-type
communications (MTC) LPWA technology standard. LTE-M follows 3GPP
specifications similar to LTE technology. Second generation of LTE chips build for IoT.
Compatible with existing LTE network
• Using conventional LTE cellular bands like 700 MHz, 800 MHz and 900 MHz
• Advantages – Low power consumption, full mobility, voice through VoLTE, high
reliability and superior data rate carrier-class e2e network security (based on LTE)
• Limitations – a support of higher bandwidth limits
• Wereables, telematics, parking, industry environment monitoring, industrial IoT with
Emergency Voice call support, healthcare, ...
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Cellular IoT – NB-IoT
• Using conventional LTE cellular bands like 700 MHz, 800 MHz and 900 MHz, and 2G
bands
• Sensor based applications, with low data rate requirement and long sensors
measurements, smart gas meters, parking operators, fire protection, etc.
• ∼1 km in urban area, up to ∼10-15 km range in rural area
• Advantages – great indoors, better area coverage (20 dB additional link budget),
expanding worldwide, reuse of the LTE design, lower cost than eMTC, long battery
life – enables lower processing and less memory on the modules, support of massive
number of devices at least 50.000 per cell, maximum message/day is unlimited
• Limitations – voice is not supported, low data rate applications with link peak DL =
∼200 kbps & UL=∼144 kbps, limited mobility and mostly designed for stationary
devices, expensive software upgrades, interoperability problems (Huawei vs
Ericsson), it does not support Adaptive Data Rate (ADR)
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5G IoT, 6G
The 5G requirements defined by ITU-R and 3GPP broadly cover three main use cases
• Mobile IoT/Massive IoT/LPWA: improved network coverage, long device
operational lifetime and a high density of connections. This is also known as mMTC
(Massive MTC)
• Critical communications: high performance, ultra-reliable, low latency industrial IoT
and mission critical applications. This is also known as Critical IoT, URLLC (Ultra
Reliable Low Latency Communications)
• Enhanced Mobile Broadband: improved performance and a more seamless user
experience accessing multimedia content for human-centric communications
NB-IoT and LTE-M networks are forwards-compatible with 5G technologies, and are
specified originally to serve mMTC-banded IoT applications
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5G and IoT
To deliver ultra-high speeds with the lowest latencies, 5G networks leverage radio
frequencies in two groups:
• FR1, also called the sub-6 GHz range,
• FR2 between 24 and 52 GHz and with extends to EHF range also known as millimetre
wave (mmWave) frequency. mmWave defined as the band of spectrum between
30 GHz and 300 GHz.
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5G since (2020)
10006 EB exabyte, in other words Mega TB (Giga GB)
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6 G is coming
Huawei – white paper https://www-file.huawei.com/-/media/corp2020/pdf/tech-insights/1/6g-white-paper-en.pdf?la=en
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LoRa
LoRa is a wireless modulation technique derived from Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS)
technology. It encodes information on radio waves using chirp pulses, as the latest
addition, it also uses Long Range Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (LR-FHSS)
• A proprietary technology of Semtech, is matched to the star topology
• The minimum bandwidth is 125 kHz, which supports a maximum clutch loss of 157 dB
• Proprietary, energy-efficient LoRa-based Chirp Spread Spectrum modulation is used to
increase interference immunity. LoRa itself uses SF7 to SF12 spreading factors
• LoRa modulation can be used in a wide range of frequencies from 137 MHz to 1020 MHz. This
includes ISM series of license-free bands such as 169 MHz, 433 MHz, 868 MHz, 915 MHz and
2.4 GHz. This is a key tool for cheap, worldwide deployment and interoperability
• Advantages & limitations – LoRa is not suitable for example for streaming video, it is
suitable for IoT and M2M. LoRa is a physical layer implementation and is agnostic with higher
layer implementations. This allows LoRa to co-exist and work with the existing network
architectures
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LoRaWAN
LoRaWAN is a Media Access Control (MAC) layer protocol built on top of LoRa modulation
• Network architecture, typically deployed in the star topology
• Nodes are not associated with a particular gateway. Instead, data transmitted by the
node is typically received by multiple gates
• Gateways here work as a transparent bridge that passes messages between end
devices and a central network server
• Gateways are connected to a network server via standard IP (Internet Protocol)
connections, while end devices use wireless communication with LoRa radio
connections
LoRaWAN is officially approved as a standard for Low Power Wide Area Networking
(LPWAN) by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 2021
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LoRaWAN
• Advantages – 10 years on a single coin cell battery, long range, deep indoor coverage,
license free spectrum, geolocation, public and private deployments, end-to-end
security AES-128 encryption, roaming, low-cost, supports Adaptive Data Rate (ADR),
the basic range is ∼5 km in urban, ∼20 km in rural area, maximum message/day is
unlimited
• in 2022, Lacuna and Semtech expanded LoRaWAN coverage through IoT to Satellite
Connectivity
https://lacuna.space/
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Sigfox
• It uses Binary phase-shift keying modulation, UNB, the bandwidth is 100 Hz
• Maximum data rate up to 100 bps, maximum messages/day UL=140, DL=4
• Star topology
• Advantages – one of the lowest cost of many ultra-simple designs, global roaming
capabilities, enhanced location tracking; in the open countryside, the signal range to
the base station is up to 50 km; the network is highly resistant to interference
• Limitations – is a service provider without an option for private networks, it does not
support the modern encryption technology, other limitations listed on page 46.
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Some LPWA comparison
Cellular LPWAN – best suited for higher data rate IoT and in smart city where telecom
infrastructure is mature. Not optimal for applications where ultra-low power is at a high
priority. Also not optimal for industrial deployments which often take place at remote
locations
Ultra-Narrowband – mitigate noise level, slow data rate, a very long on-air radio time,
battery drain, limited mobility support due to long transmission (Doppler effects). All
messages have to be rerouted to a centralized cloud platform of the provider (security
and privacy question)
Spread Spectrum – improving range without compromising data rate as in UNB. But, low
spectrum efficiency and problems with asynchronous communication causes message
overlays. Scalability problems – for a best range a highest spreading factor is required.
More complicated network management is required to improve capacity by enabling
simultaneous demodulation of multiple messages.
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Discussion – what is the best for a project?
https://behrtech.com/blog/6-leading-types-of-iot-wireless-tech-and-their-best-use-cases/
https://www.digi.com/blog/post/long-range-vs-short-range-wireless-communications
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Thank you for your attention!