Ericsson moved quickly to utilise new 3GPP standards for cellular low power, wide area (LPWA) Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, announcing it will conduct the world's first demonstration in conjunction with Intel and China Mobile.
The trio plan to demonstrate end-to-end interconnection of the newly ratified cellular IoT technologies at the Mobile World Congress Shanghai event, which takes place in the city this week. The demonstration will utilise Ericsson's RBS6000 multi-mode base station running pre-commercial cellular IoT technology, Intel's XMM 7115 modem, and China Mobile's environment monitoring application and platform.
In a statement, Ericsson said that the demonstration paves the way for fast deployment of real-world products based on the new cellular IoT standards. The company predicted the technologies will be widely deployed in 'smart' products including meters, wearable devices, home, and buildings, in addition to municipal IoT services, logistics tracking, wide area IoT, and industrial IoT.
Ericsson's prediction of speedy cellular IoT rollouts tallies with the view of GSMA CTO Alex Sinclair, who last week said the 3GPP's agreement on standards covering NB-IoT, eMTC, and EC-GSM-IoT will benefit mobile operators while offering a wider choice of products and services for consumers.
Sinclair's comments followed a 3GPP announcement that it had completed the process of ratifying cellular IoT technologies into Release 13 (LTE Advanced Pro) in the space of nine months.
Ericsson explained that the demonstration with Intel and China Mobile will see multiple environmental sensors capture temperature, humidity, brightness, PM2.5 (which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines as particulate matter measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter), and other data.
Intel's modem will be used to send the information captured by those sensors to China Mobile's environment monitoring platform via an Ericsson network equipped with pre-commercial software.
Ericsson said a China Mobile cellular IoT open lab established within its 5G Innovation Centre offers a complete testing environment for industry partners, operators, developers, and manufacturers of equipment, chips, modules, and devices.
For more:
- see this Ericsson announcement
- view this 3GPP statement
- see this U.S. EPA PM2.5 explanation
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