June 2015
10
I
NTERNET
-O
F
-T
HINGS
– A
PPLICATIONS
IoT global cellular networks
– one step closer to 5G
By Guillaume Crinon,
Avnet Memec
Together with Telecom Design as the
historical Sigfox modem provider,
Semtech, Silicon Labs, and Avnet
Memec have committed to help de-
velop the business of IoT networks in
Europe and beyond, whatever
the technology, thus paving the way
for what 5G will bring to
the Internet-of-Things: ubiquitous
low-cost and low-power Internet
connectivity for all our “things”.
n
What if the IoT big numbers were not too
far-fetched? What if expanding the market of
the connectable “things” was simply crunch-
ing the cost of connecting them? What if we
had the technology and business-model avail-
able? What if IoT telecom operators were
already o ering new global cellular services
in the unlicensed industrial scienti c medical
(ISM) bands?
Twenty years ago, massive investment was
made by major telecom operators around the
globe in order to seamlessly connect people to
one another: Mobile Network Operators were
born. At the same time, the Internet reached
every single neighborhood and home: opti-
mism and enthusiasm in the “new economy”
fueled the growth of the rst telecom revo-
lution and dotcom bubble. Twenty years and
two economic crises later, everyone agrees
that it has been a success: half the world’s pop-
ulation owns a cell phone or a smart phone,
has xed or mobile Internet access, and is now
accustomed to spending monthly on a voice
and data plan for services which have truly
become vital needs.
In order for the Mobile Network Operators
(MNO) and Mobile Virtual Network Opera-
tors (MVNO) to maintain their average rev-
enue per User (ARPU), the service delivered
to the end-user has no other choice than to
improve, compensating for the data plan
natural price erosion. is is the reason why
2G, 2.5G, 2.75G, 3G and 4G have taken over
one another for the past twenty years, always
promising more bandwidth, higher mobility,
denser coverage, better quality of service.
With more SIM cards than inhabitants in
most developed countries, the market has
reached saturation. MNOs and MVNOs
have therefore been trying hard to develop a
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) market for the
past ten years. Given the cost of connectiv-
ity, the cost of the modem, the inadequacy
of the technology with long-life low-cost bat-
tery-operated systems, this M2M market rely-
ing on legacy cellular networks is limited to
a few verticals (automotive, tracking, vending
machines, point-of-sales, security, etc), which
can accommodate these constraints. is nev-
ertheless leaves the vast majority of objects or
“things” we live and work with unconnected.
Connecting them is the challenge of the IoT,
either indirectly through a gateway, be it a
smart-phone or an Internet box, or directly
under a dedicated cellular network.
Looking at the way the 5G Public-Private
Partnership and mobile and wireless com-
munications enablers for the Twenty-twenty
Information Society (METIS) are de ning
the needs for making our cellular networks
evolve by 2020, it has become obvious that
di erent technologies will coexist in order to
best address the needs: “amazingly fast” calls
for more bandwidth and bit rate, “great ser-
vice in a crowd” could be served by repetitive
broadcast schemes, “best experience follows
you” will require sophisticated signal process-
ing and network architecture, and “ubiquitous
things communicating” calls for a simple, low-
power, low-cost technology “thing” coupled to
an agile easy-to-deploy network infrastructure.
is latter item is the one we will explore.
Among the verticals not easily served by
legacy networks are: metering (water and
gas meters), industrial logistics (pallets),
extended eet management (bicycles, trail-
ers), security (smoke detector, leak detection,
anti-tampering), environmental (waste con-
tainers, weather stations), agriculture (irriga-
tion, sensors), health (pill box, social alarm),
and many more where battery life and con-
nection cost is a deterrent. For all these appli-
cations, a WiFi or Bluetooth smart router may
not be available behind each and every device
to service a connection to the Internet, while a
2G/3G connection will hinder the pro tability
with higher costs of connectivity and battery
replacement. Nonetheless, all these applica-
tions have the following in common:
1) they are required to report only a few bytes
of data per hour or per day,
2) they tolerate network latency in the order of
magnitude of the second,
3) the objects under the network need neither
Possible METIS 5G
scenarios for IoT
