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Rise of The Machines
Rise of The Machines
Rise of The Machines
Cellular IoT devices are IoT devices that use 3GPP standardized protocols for their
connectivity [4]. Common used standards today are the LTE [5], LTE-M [6], and NB-IoT
[7] standards. This diversity in standards makes cellular IoT suitable for applications with
varying requirements. LTE and other conventional cellular connections (UMTS or GPRS),
as used by most phones, are best suited for applications that need a high data throughput.
However, many IoT applications have no need for this high throughput. For these use
cases, 3GPP has developed the NB-IoT and LTE-M standards. These standards sacrifice
the high throughput to get improved coverage, device battery life, and device cost.
In terms of coverage, NB-IoT allows for 164 dB of maximum path loss, and LTE-M
allows for 156 dB of pathloss. In a realistic setting, this entails that LTE-M can support
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99% of indoor devices, and NB-IoT can even provide service to 95% of devices in deep
indoor environments (basements, for example) [8]. The device cost is lowered by using
a much smaller bandwidth than in regular LTE, which reduces the complexity of radio
frequency hardware design. LTE-Muses only 1.4MHz of bandwidth compared to 20MHz
for regular LTE. NB-IoT cuts this even further to 200 kHz. Additionally, features that were
introduced in LTE for higher throughput, like MIMO, are removed from the LTE-Mand
NB-IoT specification [9]. These changes result in a throughput of a few hundred kbps to
1 Mbps for the LTE-M standard [10] [11]. The NB-IoT standard achieves a few ten to a
hundred kbps of throughput, depending on the network configuration [12].
These cellular IoT connections will play a major role in the expected IoT evolution.
Fredrik Jejdling from Ericsson expects the number of cellular IoT connections to grow almost
twice as fast as short-range (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, . . . ) IoT connections [13]. Cellular IoT
has the benefit of partially reusing the same infrastructure as non-IoT cellular connections.
This infrastructure has already receivedmany investments over the last 25 years due to the
importance of cellular communication to end-users. MostWestern and Asian countries
already integrated the newer NB-IoT and LTE-M standards in their network [14]. Other
benefits of cellular IoT over other LPWAN standards include scalability, interoperability,
managed quality of service, and security [15]. Furthermore, the growth of cellular IoT will
also be driven by telecommunication providers themselves in search of promising new
revenue streams like industrial IoT [16].
Despite the promising improvements IoT gives us, there are alsomany security concerns
about this new paradigm. IoT has become infamous for its lack of security features
inside its devices. In 2019 Kaspersky announced they had detected over 100 million
attacks on IoT devices [17]. Securing IoT devices is often more challenging than classic
end-user devices, like laptops.