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The IoT Radio Cage MatchAny reasonably in-depth discussion on the Internet of Things (IoT) brings up one inescapable facet -- diversity! Diversity in terms of IoT vertical segments, possible services and applications, device types likely to be in use, and candidate radio access technologies. Applications within these verticals will drive the use of specific devices and access technologies, with varied characteristics. There isn't going to be a one-size-fits-all radio solution for IoT, but a virtual cage match that is going to develop here -- a cage with a multitude of players (access technologies) that will need to coexist with one another, but where they will also compete for territorial coverage.
A match with multiple weight classes At one corner of the cage is cellular technology, the heavyweight class, characterized by relatively large device sizes, cost and power consumption. Applications needing mobility, higher-speed data and wide-area connectivity will tend to use cellular, interconnected with local networks via gateways. The automotive segment is a natural fit here. WiFi is expected to dominate the welterweight class, supporting, among others, the home automation and enterprise spaces. Given its already ubiquitous presence in residences, enterprises and public hotspots, WiFi packs a real punch here. This is the LAN space -- the domain of medium-range technologies, typically leveraging power-tethered devices. The likes of General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE), Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (Korea: SEC) and LG Electronics Inc. (London: LGLD; Korea: 6657.KS) are already selling home appliances (fridges, cooking ranges, dishwashers) equipped with WiFi, enabling remote control and monitoring. Wireline technologies like Ethernet and Power Line Communications (PLC) will coexist with WiFi in this space, although we expect WiFi to be dominant. On the other end of the cage wait the featherweight/ bantamweight battlers -- the Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) technologies. These are short-range (ten to 30 meters) technologies and support battery lives ranging from months to years. They are lightweight fighters, but there will be many of them. ZigBee, Bluetooth Low Energy, Z-Wave, UWB and Body Area Network (BAN) are all good WPAN examples. WPAN devices and access technologies are tailor-made for low-power, low-cost operation, and are generally characterized by moderate -- low-speed data requirements as well. Personal health monitoring, industrial automation and asset tracking are good examples of verticals that leverage WPAN infrastructure.
But the lines get blurry Passive WiFi is another interesting development. Researchers at the University of Washington revealed prototypes of this technology in early 2016. Passive WiFi enables lightweight sensor devices to house only baseband operation. A separate radio device, plugged into a power outlet, generates the analog RF signal. A sensor device piggybacks onto this RF signal, modulates it with its data, and reflects the signal back out for WiFi devices (access points/ routers/ smart phones) to pick up. The sensor devices behave a bit like passive RFID tags, essentially. The devices avoid having to house power-hungry RF functionality, and are therefore able to reduce power consumption by orders of magnitude. It's early days here -- the technology needs to be validated, and has to go through a standardization cycle before it can go commercial. The cellular community isn't sitting idle either. LTE-M is an IoT option, and combines higher data rate, longer-range operation with low power consumption and longer battery lives. This is a lightweight fighter with a higher strength-weight ratio, essentially.
There has to be some oversight Some level of coordination will be required. We're not talking about the static, manual management approaches that we see in cellular networks, but coordination with significant automation. This means the ability to discover and locate devices and infrastructure nodes as they enter the network. Devices, once deployed, are often difficult to physically access, replace or repair, partly because of the large numbers of devices involved and partly due to their inaccessibility. So you will need self-provisioning schemes, automated fault management mechanisms and the ability to remotely troubleshoot and fix problems. The referee mechanism has to factor in the requirements unique to each device type. Most importantly, spectrum will need to be holistically managed such that interference and congestion issues are mitigated. Interference impacts the quality of service being delivered to the users of the system. For example, WiFi, Bluetooth and ZigBee can all operate in the 2.4GHz band. Radio resource management schemes will be needed to ensure that the right network resources are allocated to the right devices at the right time -- so the collocated systems don't clobber one another! — Narayan Menon, CTO, EVP of engineering & founder, XCellAir The views presented herein and in the message boards represent the personal views of the author, not XCellAir Inc. |
In part two of this Q&A, the carrier's group head of network virtualization, SDN and NFV calls on vendors to move faster and lead the cloudification charge.
It's time to focus on cloudification instead, Fran Heeran, the group head of Network Virtualization, SDN and NFV at Vodafone, says.
5G must coexist with LTE, 3G and a host of technologies that will ride on top of it, says Arnaud Vamparys, Orange Network Labs' senior vice president for radio networks.
The OpenStack Foundation's Ildiko Vancsa suggests that 5G readiness means never abandoning telco applications and infrastructures once they're 'cloudy enough.'
IDC's John Delaney talks about how telecom CIOs are addressing the relationship between 5G, automation and virtualization, while cautioning that they might be forgetting the basics.
On-the-Air Thursdays Digital Audio
ARCHIVED | December 7, 2017, 12pm EST
Orange has been one of the leading proponents of SDN and NFV. In this Telco Transformation radio show, Orange's John Isch provides some perspective on his company's NFV/SDN journey.
Special Huawei Video
Huawei Network Transformation Seminar The adoption of virtualization technology and cloud architectures by telecom network operators is now well underway but there is still a long way to go before the transition to an era of Network Functions Cloudification (NFC) is complete. |
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