Overview
The IoT (Internet of Things) technologies using machine-type communications are already ordinary in our daily lives. The smart home and office using IFTTT (If This Then That) and OTA (over-the-air) updates in the car are examples that already affect our lives. For some time now, the devices connected to the internet, in use around the world, outnumber the global population.
What’s inside:
The 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) has developed global standards based on a roadmap toward the most demanding IoT use cases. Since Release 13, LTE (Long-Term Evolution a.k.a. 4G technology) standards have introduced LTEMTC (Machine-Type Communication) and NB-IoT (NarrowBand-Internet of Things) technologies. The objective of the LTE-MTC and NB-IoT is to reduce device complexity and power consumption and to support extended coverage and high device density. From Release 15, NR (New Radio a.k.a. 5G technology) standards have also introduced technologies such as eMTC (enhanced MTC) and URLLC (Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication) to support connectivity for a massive number of IoT devices with high reliability.
In this whitepaper, we overview 3GPP technologies developed for communications of infrequent and small size data traffic, for example, observed in sensors, smart meters, and wearable devices. This whitepaper categorizes such communications as small data transmission (SDT) and reviews PHY (Physical) and MAC (Medium Access Control) layers procedures developed for the SDT in the 3GPP standards. The current progress and future evolutionary direction of 3GPP IoT technologies will also be discussed here.
In this whitepaper, you’ll learn more about:
- Small Data Transmission (SDT)
- LTE standards for SDT
- SDT development in NR standards
- Future evolution direction of 3GPP IoT technologies
