Issue link: https://resources.mouser.com/i/1442769
Metric Goal Low-power consumption About 1nA, allowing a 10-year life span with a battery capacity of 5Wh Continuous device-cost For both the infrastructure reduction and user equipment Enhanced coverage For better performance outdoors and especially indoors Enhanced security For strong authentication and other features Efficient data transfers From enabling small, intermittent blocks of data Advanced network design For a simplified topology and deployment Network scalability With more than 50,000 per base station Increased coverage With an improvement of 15 to 20dB (5 to 6 times) Decreasing data rates With the lowest possible while maintaining quality of service Table 1: Cellular IoT metrics and results. 8 Fifth Generation Even though there is no real fifth generation (5G) as of this writing, discussing the cellular industry's home automation offerings without touching on its pending impact on IoT would be misleading. Notably, 5G is being touted as a major driver of IoT growth. LTE IoT is in global deployment, which is the initial step to meet 5G IoT requirements. 5G New Radio (NR) IoT will fully leverage the continued LTE IoT evolution with the in-band deployment of eMTC and NB-IoT in 5G spectrum. Moreover, 5G promises to offer a new infrastructure and design with inherent capabilities that already offer several new services at a low cost, with high agility, and at low energy consumptions. It will also deliver reliability, latency, scalability, and security—all major IoT considerations. 5G will support a huge number of devices at the same time within a specific range and with a connection density that is about 500 times as high as 4G. A Plethora of IoT Possibilities Many communication technologies are well known, such as Wi- Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and 2G/3G/4G cellular. Depending on the application, factors such as range, data requirements, security and power demands, and battery life will dictate the choice of one or some combination of technologies (Table 1). LPWAN: A Formidable Foe While cellular networks are ubiquitous, LPWAN providers such as LoRaWAN, Sigfox, and Weightless are attempting to build out their networks fast. LPWANs are considerably less expensive to build, deploy, and operate in an unlicensed spectrum, without regulatory burdens. LPWANs: • Operate on small, inexpensive batteries for years. • Have an operating range that is typically more than 2km in urban settings. • Can only send less than 1,000 bytes of data per day or less than 5,000 bits per second. • Target situations where devices need to send small amounts of data over a wide area while maintaining the battery life over many years. Home automation is a front and center battleground for IoT technology choices representing short- and long-range cellular networks and LPWANs (Table 2). Each application must maintain its own unique requirements including managing battery life, data size, and the impact of gaps in coverage. • FCC certified and Carrier End- device certified • Authentic 20-pin Digi XBee ™ TH form factor; Smallest end-device certified cellular modem • Digi XBee ™ Transparent and API modes simplify s/w design LEARN MORE 4 Digi XBee ™ Cellular LTE Cat 1 Table 2: Bandwidth and data rates compared. LoRaWAN LTE EC-GSM-IoT LTE-M NB-IoT Channel <500kHz c1.4 to 20MHz 200kHz 1.08MHz bandwidth 200kHz Maximum <50kbps 10Mbps <140kbps <1Mbps 170kbps data rate down, down, 5Mbps 250kbps up up