Generations of Mobile Standards

Standards for the IoT

Dec 02, 2016

December 2, 2016

iot summary tmnailWith news reports out this week, that the 3GPP standard is set to be in 35% of low power wide area (LPWA) network connections by 2020, our Working Group RAN3 Chairman - Philippe Reininger - has given a timely presentation at the IoT Business & Technologies Congress (November 30, in Singapore), outlining the latest progress made on specifications for the IoT market.

3GPP now has what he described as a 'portfolio of technologies' that 3GPP operators can use to address market needs. The presentation helps to explain and summarise the major features - eMTC, NB-IOT and EC-GSM-IoT - completed in 3GPP Release 13.

However, the main part of the presentation covered the enhancements that will be published in Release-14, which is due for completion by June 2017.

eMTC enhancements (aka. LTE Cat M1);

  • Support for positioning
  • Support for Multicast
  • Mobility for inter-frequency measurements
  • Higher data rates
  • Support for VoLTE

NB-IOT enhancements;

  • Agreement on NB-IOT positioning
  • Support for Multicast
  • Power consumption and latency reduction
  • Non- Anchor PRB enhancements
  • Mobility and service continuity enhancements
  • New Power Class(es)

See also, Enhanced DRX for NB-IOT and eMTC.

EC-GSM-IoT enhancements

  • Various radio interface enhancements

Further reading:

Contact for this article: Kevin FLYNN, Marketing and Communications Officer, 3GPP