Going ahead – IoT and 5G

By Invitation Giles Peckham

5G is all about securely connecting billions of devices faster, with a solid connection, almost anywhere. It will go well beyond the current mobile experience, improving overall service to help usher in the era of Internet of Things, with 1000X network capacity for 100X the number of connected devices and machines.

By Giles Peckham

Over 50 billion connected devices are expected by 2020. As a result, 5G networks must be more scalable, intelligent, and heterogeneous. Technologies such as distributed small cells, massive-MIMO with hundreds of antennas, and centralized base-band processing via CloudRAN, will dramatically increase coverage and data throughput. Networks will need to connect securely through backhaul and optical front haul for processing.

Ways to realise the promise of IoT

The essential steps to jump start development and deployment of new IoT-based services include standardisation, stimulating an open source industry standard application development framework and running pilot case studies. The continuous evolution of mobile broadband networks and related technologies is also critical to address the growing demand for connectivity and bandwidth. And it is equally important to incorporate capabilities and mechanisms to monetise the network to sustain continued investments.

Looking at services already deployed, the LTE-based mobile broadband consumer market is approaching maturity and saturation from a revenue standpoint. Therefore, it is important to target new applications, use cases and markets as the industry prepares itself for 5G deployment in 2020. In this, the IoT is emerging as a major growth area that could hold the answer to this quest.

This is not just for the future; the IoT is happening today with leading operators reporting millions of connected devices in their networks. Proprietary low power wide area (LPWA) protocols are leading the market for providing IoT connectivity while 3GPP wrestles with diverse proposals to arrive at an industry standard for IoT in Release 13. The fast emerging ecosystem for IoT has products in sight for building low-cost IoT end nodes that can have a battery life of more than 10 years.

Monetising networks

Many IoT networks and services will be deployed in the next three to five years. To monetise these IoT networks, operators, existing or new, need to grapple successfully with three key issues. First, operators need to accept the existence of both proprietary and standards-based IoT connectivity and prepare for hybrid IoT networks. Second, a focus on connectivity alone will not be sufficient to monetise IoT networks. Comprehensive data analytics will be needed to process data gathered from millions of connected devices to drive new applications and use cases.

Nnetwork security and reliability form the third issue that is critical for commercialisation and broader adoption.

Programmable and flexible IoT gateways or hubs supporting multiple radio protocols, intelligent data gathering and dissemination between the cloud and connected devices, and ensuring up-to-date secure links will play a pivotal role in solving these problems.

Requirements

The IoT requires low-power long-range communications, asymmetric asynchronous low data rate connectivity, and low-cost end nodes with a battery life of more than 10 years. Attributes of IoT connectivity and devices are likely to vary based on the end market and applications.

The 5G industry forums have classified IoT into two broad use cases: low energy massive machine communications; and low latency mission critical machine type communications. Machine to machine communications are envisaged to be an integral part for both of these use cases.

An example of low energy massive machine communications is a network of connected sensors and actuators that can bring significant productivity and efficiency to industries such as healthcare, shipping, agriculture, food, water and energy management, smart homes and smart buildings. Connected wearable gadgets are integral for this use case and hold the promise of improving every aspect of our lives. The cost of a device, battery life, ease of deployment and efficient asynchronous communications are the key requirements for low energy, massive machine type communications. Typical data rates per IoT node are of the order of 100kbps.

Automotive, industrial IoT, smart energy grids, traffic safety and emergency response services are some of the examples of low latency machine type communications. Reliability, resiliency and low latency are critical components for this segment. Typical data rates are in the range 100 kbps to 1mbps. The industrial IoT will bring multiple vertical markets within the fold of mobile broadband networks, opening healthy revenue streams for operators.

Networks

Using unlicensed bands, proprietary low-power wide area network technologies such as LoRa, Sigfox, Ingenu, Starfish and Weightless exist today for IoT deployments. For automotive, dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) as known in the USA and cooperative intelligent transport system (ITS) elsewhere are emerging for vehicle to everything (V2X) radio connectivity. This standard is primarily geared for safety applications. DSRC uses 75MHz bandwidth, seven 10MHz channels in a 5.9GHz licensed spectrum.

LTE offers a good framework to harmonise proprietary technologies and fragmented standards to provide scale, ease of deployment and maintenance. LTE-M, an extension of LTE for M2M communications, as part of 3GPP RAN Release 12, narrow band LTE (NB-LTE) as part of 3GPP RAN Release 13, and extended coverage GSM (EC-GSM) as part of GERAN Release 13 are standards-based technologies that will use licensed spectrum.

Gateways

Programmable and flexible IoT gateways or hubs distributed across the network will play a pivotal role. To support hybrid technologies, IoT gateways will need to support multiple radio protocols depending on the installation point or service type. System flexibility and agility to harmonise existing proprietary technologies and evolving standards will be critical components for building economy of scale in the ecosystem to augment broader commercialisation. These gateways need not only intelligent data gathering and dissemination between the cloud and connected devices but also to perform edge compute functions.

Data may be location specific and meaningful only for a short time in many IoT applications. Often, application latency constraints will necessitate distributed data processing. Edge compute and local storage could be essential in IoT gateways to overcome low latency requirements, and these gateways will need system functions to secure links to connected devices and the cloud. As well as solving critical system problems, IoT gateways can act as test beds for running pilots for new applications and use cases for IoT networks. Instead of waiting for optimal products or a complete ecosystem to become available, operators can use these test beds to work closely with the supply chain in defining system requirements. These reasonably well-defined pilot case studies and associated business findings can help steer optimal methods and network evolution to increase revenue potential latent in the IoT.

An IoT gateway with sufficient compute power can also stimulate an open source industry standard application development framework and a development community. Further, support for broadband LTE radio could enhance integrated services for applications such as personal smart phones to control smart homes or vehicular and passenger mobile broadband connectivity.

All Programmable FPGAs and SoCs

All programmable FPGAs and SoCs provide a good way to meet the challenging requirements of IoT gateways and IoT test-bed platforms. They can help instantiate different radios on a need basis with built-in flexibility to adapt to evolving standards, perform edge compute and secure links.

The author of this article, Giles Peckhan is Regional Director, Xilinx