YieldPoint embraces Mobile IoT and 5G

At YieldPoint we have a vision that the combination of sensor and telemetry technologies must be fully integrated to create the most efficient and economical monitoring solutions. Our team in Kingston, Ontario is innovating continually using the latest technologies in order to bring the most reliable, cost effective and user friendly solution to monitoring projects worldwide.

Mobile IoT versus LoRaWan

Low power wireless connectivity is an integral component of this vision and can be a significant cost component when designing  remote monitoring instrumentation projects. For geotechnical monitoring, LPWAN technologies have gained acceptance especially those based on LoRaWAN. These technologies operate on unlicensed RF bands (usually the ISM band around 900MHz). In contrast, mobile IoT systems (LTE-M and NB-IoT) operate on “licensed” cellular bands and consequently are less susceptible to noise and interference. As LoRa and other ISM band traffic inevitably increases, range and power efficiency will be challenged as devices compete for the same bandwidth.

LTE-M and NB-IoT networks are being built by major cellular telecom providers, who have now introduced competitively priced service plans for IoT devices. The introduction of low power, low cost cellular hardware is accelerating the development curve and the current SIM card pain-point is  being relieved with the introduction of eSIM and iSIM technologies. Finally, the forward compatibility of LTE-M and NB-IoT means that investments made today will co-exist with core 5G technologies in the future.

Mobile IoT (LTE-M, NB-IoT and 5G)

Mobile IoT technologies possess the following characteristics

• Low power consumption that enables devices to operate for several years on batteries
• Low device unit cost
• Improved outdoor and indoor coverage compared with existing wide area technologies
• Secure connectivity and strong authentication
• Optimized data transfer for small, intermittent blocks of data
• Simplified network topology and deployment
• Network scalability for capacity upgrade

Learn More about LTE-M chipset provider  here

LTE-M is the industry term for the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) machine-type communications (MTC) LPWA technology standard introduced by 3GPP in Release 13. LTE-M supports lower device complexity, massive connection density, low device power consumption, low latency and provides extended coverage, while allowing the reuse of the LTE installed base. The deployment of LTE-M can be done “in-band” within a normal LTE carrier, or “standalone” in a dedicated spectrum.

Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) is a cellular radio technology that addresses the LPWA requirements for IoT. NB-IoT is characterized by improved indoor coverage, support of massive number of low throughput devices, low delay sensitivity, ultra-low device cost, low device power consumption and optimized network architecture. Like LTE-M, NB-IoT can be deployed “in-band” within a normal LTE carrier, or “standalone” for deployments in dedicated spectrum.

Both LTE-M and NB-IoT are part of the 5G mobile network technology .