Skip to main content

Is LTE Cat 1bis Uniting the Fragmented Cellular IoT Market?

There are just too many options when it comes to IoT. LoRaWAN is probably the winner from the unlicensed camp with plethora of other options also available. On the licensed front while LTE-M and NB-IoT haven't enjoyed the success they were touted to, other cIoT options aren't doing that badly.

In their recently released whitepaper entitled, 'Understanding the benefits of LTE Cat 1bis technology', Qualcomm explains:

LTE-M and NB-IoT are two IoT-specific standards introduced in 3GPP release 13. They provide low power operation, extended coverage range and low data rate; they are aptly called low-power wide area networking, or LPWAN technologies. In Release 13, LTE Cat 1bis was also added to the standards. Cat 1bis requires one receive- (Rx) antenna, making it easier and cheaper to build devices in smaller form factors. Recently, IoT use cases involving drones and industrial automation have evolved, requiring either higher throughput, lower latency or both. 5G or higher-category LTE devices (LTE Cat 16) are suitable for such use cases.

Rel-17 introduces the RedCap (also known as NR-Light) – reduced capability – modem. RedCap is the 5G equivalent of the LTE Cat 4 modem, allowing data rates of approximately 200 Mbps using sub-6GHz spectrum. Rel-18 takes that a step further and brings in support for IoT-centric eRedCap (enhanced RedCap) modems offering data rates from 10 to 15 Mbps, the 5G equivalent of LTE Cat 1bis.

Cat 1bis and eRedCap are complementary technologies, with eRedCap providing an evolution path to Cat 1bis.

There is still quite limited availability of LTE-M and NB-IoT networks. This has definitely encouraged smaller operators to stick with LTE Cat1 and now Cat 1bis for offering IoT services. With the evolution path of moving on to eRedCap, it will just make the case for Cat 1bis stronger.

Some additional info from Qualcomm on this topic:

eMTC technologies like LTE Cat NB2 (NB-IoT) and LTE-M require operators to upgrade software on their networks — a big speed bump on the road to adoption. LTE Cat 1bis devices, on the other hand, operate on the same LTE network on which our cell phones run. No network upgrade is necessary.

The LTE network treats a Cat 1bis device as it does a Cat 1 device, with one important difference: Cat 1bis requires a single receive- (Rx) antenna instead of the two antennas used in Cat 1.

And unlike eMTC, there is no need to reserve network capacity for coexistence with LTE. Cat 1bis devices do not need dedicated bandwidth; they coexist with regular LTE Cat 1 devices, Cat 4 devices and smartphones on the same network and spectrum.

Related Posts: 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Laser Inter-Satellite Links (LISLs) in a Starlink Constellation

When we first talked about Starlink back in 2019 , we saw in the video that the concept involved laser communication to communicate between the satellites. While the initially launched satellites did not have the laser communication mechanism built in, it looks like they are being added to the newer ones.  A report from Fast Company in late 2021 said: One of the next big upgrades in telecom will involve satellites firing lasers at each other—to beam data, not blow stuff up. The upside of replacing traditional radio-frequency communication with lasers, that encode data as pulses of light, can be much like that of deploying fiber-optic cable for terrestrial broadband: much faster speeds and much lower latency. “Laser links in orbit can reduce long-distance latency by as much as 50%, due to higher speed of light in vacuum & shorter path than undersea fiber,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted in July about the upgrade now beginning for that firm’s Starlink satellite constellation. The
1 comment
Read more

CSI-RS vs SRS Beamforming

In an issue of Signals Flash by Signals Research Group (SRG), they talked about 2 different types of MIMO. Quoting from their journal, "CSI-RS versus SRS. Those operators that have tested or made token use of MU-MIMO leverage a flavor of MU-MIMO that is based on CSI-RS. The MU-MIMO network we tested was based on SRS, which makes it far more likely to observe sixteen spatial layers (versus eight)." I reached out to Emil Björnson, Visiting Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Associate Professor at Linköping University to see if he has explained this in any of his videos. Here is what he said: " I'm not talking about 3GPP terminology in any of my videos. But you can listen to the slides that starts around 12:40 in this video (embedded below) . If you are looking for CSI-RS vs SRS based MU-MIMO, then jump to around 12:40 in this video where you can see CSI-RS being referred to as "grid of beams" and SRS is similar to the other option, which is t
Post a Comment
Read more

IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (EHT), a.k.a. Wi-Fi 7

We have been writing about Wi-Fi for a long time, weather it's to do with indoor connectivity , competition with 5G or just a name change to something simpler. When we last wrote about WiFi 6, a.k.a. 802.11ax, we were expecting a quick adoption of the technology in the industry. We are still not there yet.  You know what's strange? None of the new @madebygoogle gadgets from yesterday support Wi-Fi 6. Not the Pixel 5, not the Pixel 4a 5G, not the Nest Audio, and not the new Chromecast. pic.twitter.com/QtJ8iB9FeO — Ry Crist (@rycrist) October 1, 2020 Take for instance the new iPhone 12 supports Wi-Fi 6 in all their models as one would expect but none of the new Google Pixel phones (4a, 4a 5G and 5) support it. In fact none of the new Google devices support it. Which is rather bizarre. While we are still looking forward to Wi-Fi 6 becoming widespread, IEEE has already started working on the successor of 802.11ax, 802.11be - Standard for Information technology--Telecommunicati
2 comments
Read more