Commercial 4G LTE Networks for Supporting Strategic IoT Applications

Book excerpt: Emerging Internet of Things (IoT) applications and services including e-healthcare, smart grid, smart water, smart cities, and intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are set to transform and disrupt the way we live and work. According to IDC, with IoT spending forecast to surpass $1.2 trillion in 2022, a staggering number of “things” will require ubiquitous connectivity. There is an emerging consensus that cellular-based Fourth-Generation (4G) Long Term Evolution (LTE) and emerging 5G are the key technologies candidates that can provide the required global IoT connectivity to such a staggering number of “things”. The IoT will enable billions of sensors, actuators, and smart devices to be interconnected and managed remotely via the Internet. By 2020, it is expected that the IoT will encompass more than 24 billion smart devices. Some of these smart devices are compact multifunction sensors, where multiple sensors are integrated and packed into a smart compact module to monitor and detect multiple variables simultaneously. Cellular-based Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications is one of the key IoT enabling technologies with huge market potential for cellular service providers deploying LTE networks. Massive IoT (MIoT) refers to the tens of billions of M2M devices, objects, and machines that require ubiquitous connectivity. According to the global standards body 3GPP, a massive scale means deploying at least 1 million devices per squared kilometer. IoT applications span a wide range of use cases ranging from mission-critical applications with strict latency and reliability requirements to those that require support of massive number of connected M2M devices with relaxed latency and reliability requirements. Mission-critical IoT applications could be enabled by 4G LTE or emerging 5G capabilities.