07/24/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 07/24/2024 06:05
Research shows that the cellular Internet of Things (IoT) market is in recovery, with a growth of 7 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2024. 5G provides connectivity for emerging IoT devices and allows for advanced use cases in support of massive, critical, and broadband IoT. Current 4G LTE cellular connectivity using the 3GPP Release 13 standards to connect IoT devices is still prevalent in IoT networks. However, 5G's high bandwidth, low latency, and better spectrum efficiencies will allow for the connectivity of billions more IoT devices.
Fundamental IoT Protocols
When it comes to IoT, the following fundamental protocols must be considered for proper data routing and continuous communication.
5G: Cellular IoT Connectivity Protocols
Cellular connectivity protocols are critical to the performance of IoT devices. Protocols such as CAT-M and Narrowband (NB) IoT are used to support low-power wide-area (LPWA) technologies such as LTE-M, which provides lower device complexity, long battery lifetime, and extended coverage. LTE-M also allows for the reuse of an LTE installed base. Both NB-IoT and LTE-M are expected to evolve to support 5G IoT applications, services, and devices with seamless migration and connectivity requirements for massive, critical, and broadband IoT use cases.
5G RedCap for IoT
3GPP Release 17 introduced 5G RedCap or New Radio (NR) Light for IoT to lower device cost and complexity and support emerging deployment scenarios. Current IoT device categories for NB-IoT (Cat-NB1) and LTE-M (Cat-M1) can support 4G/5G devices using lower data rates but drive higher cost and complexity for high-data-rate devices expected to deploy in midband frequencies on 5G networks. NR-Light has greater capacity than NB-IoT and LTE-M and allows for broader use cases across enterprise and consumer IoT devices. According to Ericsson, RedCap devices with the lowest possible complexity are expected to reduce complexity for the IoT modem by about 65 percent for low or midband connectivity.
What Are the Challenges Between 5G and IoT?
Challenges exist with any emerging technology. Here are a few associated with 5G and IoT.
5G Future-Proofs Next-Generation IoT Device Connectivity
5G provides the capacity to increase IoT device connectivity and enhance performance via data transfer speed and improved latency. 5G can provide the following benefits:
Based on 3GPP standards for 5G IoT use cases, IoT devices must evolve to support next-generation 5G network requirements for machine to machine and low-power IoT devices for critical and latency-intensive use cases while supporting large amounts of data within short periods.
The NETSCOUT 5G Solution
With decades of experience in the industry and a scalable cloud-based platform, NETSCOUT provides a best-in-class solution that can empower communications service providers (CSPs) to achieve end-through-end visibility for any IoT device performance. Our Visibility Without Borders approach works with any cloud, any network, any service, and any technology, and our solutions are 3GPP compliant.
Learn more about NETSCOUT 5G solutions.