Some people say that the second half of the Internet is the era of IoT 5g narrowband iottechnology. This is not necessarily a false statement.

Recently, under the guidance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, three major telecom operators, big brands and other companies co-hosted a 5G-IoT "billion" industry summit in the form of an online live broadcast. The meeting pointed out that the domestic emphasis on new infrastructure construction has brought significant development opportunities for emerging industries such as 5G and IoT. Accelerate the formation of NB-IoT, 4G, 5G and other technologies to take over the development pattern of various connections of the Internet of Things.

IoT branch technologies with broad business prospects

The concept of 5g has been popular for a long time, while what exactly is nb-iot, some people may not know.

NB-IoT is the abbreviation of Narrowband IoT in English. The so-called narrowband IoT refers to the IoT built on traditional cellular mobile network technology, consuming only about 180 kilohertz (kHz) time bandwidth, because the social support system low power consumption as well as devices in the wide area network of cellular structure data information link, also called low-power wide area network (LPWAN).

"Currently, narrowband IoT mainly uses the licensed frequency band below 1 GHz shared with cellular communication and 2G/3G/4G cellular communication technologies supported by the International Organization for Standardization 3GPP." In an interview, the director of the Institute of Cyber Attack and Defense Countermeasures Technology, School of Computer Science and Technology, Polytechnic University, said that narrowband IoT is a low-bandwidth consumption IoT, which can be said to be a branch technology of IoT.

In September 2015, 3gpp run (radio access network) , a third-generation cooperative project, attracted the attention and response of most international operators, system equipment manufacturers and terminal manufacturers, and experts say it has formed a commercial prospect for a worldwide unified iot branch communication standard.

Now standing on the cusp of 5G, narrowband IoT has been given a greater historical mission to empower thousands of businesses and help make the Internet of Everything a reality. An expert revealed in a speech at the 5G NB-IoT "100 million " Journey Industry Summit that by the end of 2019, China has built more than 700,000 NB-IoT base stations, achieving continuous coverage in major cities, towns and above, laying a good network foundation for the development of various applications.

Catering to over 70% of IoT application scenarios for demand

Narrowband IoT is highly anticipated due to its own characteristics. Generally speaking, narrowband IoT has the characteristics of wide coverage, multiple connections, low power consumption and low cost.

The wide coverage will greatly improve the current status of coverage within hospitals. In the same frequency band, narrowband iot increases 20 dB over existing networks, which equates to a 100-fold increase in coverage area; multiple connections means it can support 100,000 connections within a sector; low power consumption features enable its terminal modules to have a standby time of up to 10 years; and low cost means its modules are low cost, with the cost of a single connection module dropping to RMB 30.

"Because it is built on a cellular network, it can be deployed directly on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks, UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) networks or LTE (Long Term Evolution) networks, greatly reducing deployment costs and allowing for a smooth upgrade of existing networks to quickly support the industry's market demand. "Experts say that narrowband IoT is considered one of the best solutions for the cellular network industry to cope with the Internet of Everything. The current application scenario is vertical industries such as utility services or industrial control.

The vice president of management of the business department of the big brand development domestic network operator company said at the 5G NB-IoT "billion" journey for the industry organization summit in China, NB-IoT has the characteristics of large connection, wide coverage, low power consumption, catering to the needs of more than 70% of IoT application scenarios.

At present, China's three major operators have achieved NB-IoT network construction and coverage in more than 300 cities and provided billions of dollars in special subsidies for IoT, while a few giants, as representatives of giant companies, have been included in IoT.

In the past 3 years, the company has achieved leapfrog development and economies of scale in several industries. In the four fields of smart water meter, smart gas meter, smart fire fighting, smart electric bicycle, more than 10 million levels of narrowband IoT connections have been achieved; while nearly 10 industries such as smart manhole cover, smart door lock, tracking and positioning, smart street light have achieved more than 1 million levels of narrowband IoT connections.

It is understood that in January 2020, the number of NB-IoT global connections exceeded 100 million; the number of domestic connections also exceeded 100 million in February. This marks that the NB-IoT industry has passed the historical turning point and entered the explosive growth stage. In terms of operator distribution, the number of NB-IoT connections of China Telecom and China Mobile has exceeded 40 million, and China Unicom exceeded 10 million. It is expected that the number of 5G NB-IoT connections worldwide will double again by the end of this year.

It may trigger a revolution in the development and application of disruptive technology innovation in multiple fields

Although the narrowband IoT is developing rapidly, it is still lacking in many aspects.

Experts say the performance of narrowband IoT in terms of interoperability and consistency needs further improvement; in terms of network coverage and infrastructure, the deployment and long-term support of narrowband IoT is severely constrained by time and cost. For example, in terms of cost, although the module cost has been reduced to below $30, the comprehensive cost of terminal module integration and application system adaptation is not low compared with mature 4g and 5g modules; in terms of application and business model, a complete cooperative ecosystem has not yet been established.

Meanwhile, NB-IoT also faces fierce competition from other IoT connectivity technologies including LoRa. In addition, issues such as low-rate data transmission, privacy and security, and IT system conversion time are also bottlenecks to its development.

Experts also pointed out that the development of mobile IoT enterprises represented by NB-IoT China, although we have made breakthrough achievements, but also face the challenge of choosing some problems. At present, China for the most part NB-IoT connection is mainly concentrated in a few cities, there is still a lack in terms of nationwide popular education, a large number of base stations in the light load, idle state; compared with 4G, 5G and other advanced science and technology research, 2G, 3G technology in general can use learning efficiency is relatively low, but 2G, 3G IoT connection still accounts for a large market share in the new IoT The number of connections accounted for nearly 20%, but also need to continue to accelerate the formation of students 4G, 5G technology ladder to undertake the development of various types of IoT connections economic pattern; network service coverage still needs to be improved to further establish perfect, some rural areas NB-IoT network coverage living level can not be fully able to meet the requirements of bearing 2G connection migration.

Industry standardization issues also need to be resolved. In the past, China's IoT standards mainly focused on how to solve the problem of connecting wireless terminals to the network, but as the application of NB-IoT becomes more and more widespread, the standards of inter-enterprise communication modules are not yet interconnected and very confusing. This requires the industry to accelerate the standardization process.

In 2019, NB-IoT technology is included in the IMT-2020 (5G) candidate information technology research proposal submitted by Chinese enterprises, and it is expected that in June this year, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will officially announce the 5G technology development program, and NB-IoT will become the mainstream media technology in China's future 5G IoT era to be realized soon.

Experts point out that with the advent of the 5G era, NB-IoT will certainly make a big difference in terms of multicast support, continuous mobility and new power levels. At the same time, the improvement of infrastructure such as NB-IoT will, in turn, promote the real landing and popularity of 5G. In the future, the convergence of 5G and NB-IoT technologies will empower other traditional industries and will surely trigger a new round of disruptive innovations and application revolutions in areas such as industrial Internet, connected vehicles, and unmanned systems. (Reporter Lu Chengkuan)