5G and IoT

More than bandwidth: what 5G brings to the Internet of Things

5G is still a great unknown. We have heard a lot about higher transmission speed and greater connection capacity, which allows more devices to be connected at the same time, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

5G offers a wide variety of advantages, and some of them are particularly interesting for IoT and digitalization, such as the diversity of environments that can be covered with just one infrastructure.

The technology provides unprecedented flexibility to meet the needs of all use cases in any vertical, resulting in improvements in cost, energy consumption and signal coverage. To better understand these benefits, let’s analyze them according to three distinct service areas, each optimized to meet the needs of a specific market segment: enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable low-latency communications and massive machine-type communications.

Service areas

The three 5G service areas

One network, three ways of serving devices: broadband, low latency and massive scale.

eMBB · Enhanced Mobile Broadband

Broadband access over a wide coverage area, serving crowded locations, commercial or office areas, and high-speed public transportation systems.

URLLC · Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications

A wide range of advanced services for latency-sensitive connected devices, enabling applications across many fields.

mMTC · Massive Machine-Type Communications

The service area most optimized for the Internet of Things: large numbers of devices at a low cost and with minimal energy consumption.
Diagram: three blue circles around a globe marked 5G. eMBB, Enhanced Mobile Broadband, extended coverage, with an office building; URLLC, Ultra-Reliable and Low Latency Communication, with a factory; mMTC, Massive Machine Type Communication, with a connected house
The three service areas side by side, each with the kind of place it serves best.

mMTC

Massive machine-type communications, the area built for IoT

mMTC enables the communication of large numbers of devices at a low cost and with minimal energy consumption.

The goal of mMTC is to support a huge number of devices and applications, such as sensors, actuators and the other devices that are part of the IoT ecosystem. Its characteristics include low cost, low power and low complexity, which make it well suited to a wide range of IoT applications such as smart cities, transportation and industrial automation.

The specification for mMTC has some unique characteristics that aim to ensure data is transmitted quickly and efficiently, even in the most challenging environments.

The mMTC specification

Battery life
Device networks with a battery life of up to 10 years
Coverage penetration
164 dB with a capacity of 160 bits per second
Coverage density
Up to one million connected devices per square kilometre
Latency
Under 10 seconds for 20 bytes of data
Hardware
Very cheap, a crucial element for massive scaling

mMTC relies on two network standards that have been available for a few years, although so far they have not been as significant as might have been expected at their origins: NB-IoT (Narrowband IoT) and LTE-M. Both are 3GPP specifications designed for IoT, to achieve this massive scalability.

Thinger.io and 5G

Built for scalability at the level of 5G

Since its origins, Thinger.io was created to allow the creation of solutions with scalability criteria at the level of 5G technologies.

We developed our entire infrastructure, architecture and code, written in C++, with this purpose. Thanks to this vision, we understood in 2019 that 5G and Thinger.io had to go hand in hand. Since then, we have worked on integrating these technologies and the functionalities that make it simple to take full advantage of them.

Bring 5G to your IoT project

Want to know what Thinger.io can bring to your projects with 5G, or have an idea you want to develop with IoT? Do not hesitate to get in touch.

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