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A new white paper from US cellular industry body 5G Americas stakes a claim for 5G to play a dominant role in providing connectivity for IoT devices and applications.
It is the latest move by the 5G ecosystem to promote the technology’s role in IoT. Back in 2015 mobile operator executives surveyed by Heavy Reading for the US based Telecommunications Industry Association flagged IoT as a key driver for 5G, second only to boosting mobile broadband capacity.
Gartner put a damper on thingsafter reporting the results of a survey of 200 IT and business leader members of the Gartner Research Circle in which they identified IoT as the main application for 5G.
Gartner said: “Even once fully implemented 5G will suit only a narrow subset of IoT use cases that require a combination of very high data rates and very low latency … [and] many proven and less expensive alternatives already exist for wireless IoT connectivity … [that] would avoid the cost and complexity associated with cellular communications.”
The 122 page document 5G: The Future of IoTdescribes some of the major IoT market segments: — industrial IoT, smart cities, enterprise IoT and consumer IoT — the communications requirements for IoT in these segments and then details how standards developments in 3GPP will enable 5G to meet these requirements. It also looks at spectrum options being considered for licensed, unlicensed and shared bands.
It argues that, rather than simply responding to industry requirements for IoT “the 3GPP standards are themselves a market driver in the future-proofing and delivery of IoT.”
The paper says that, starting with Release 16 of the 3GPP standards, ”3GPP has taken a focus on enhancing the 5G network architecture and [New Radio] to better support IoT devices used by industry, enterprise, and in the home.”
It lists examples of these being capabilities to support: ultra-reliable and low latency communications; time sensitive communications; interactions with Ethernet; non-public networks; use of licensed and unlicensed spectrum.
3GPP Release 16 & IoT
The paper details specific work being undertaken in 3GPP to incorporate requirements for IoT into Release 16, due to be finalised in March 2020, in particular work being undertaken by 3GPP SA2 (SA is the 3GPP Technical Specification Group on Service and System Aspects. SA2 works on architecture).
However it says that, due to heavy workload, work on many of the specifications will be continued in Release 17, due to be finalised in September 2021.
Some of the most important IoT requirements anticipated in 3GPP’s work are ultra-reliable and low latency communications needed for communication with vehicles, industrial automation and process control.
“Motion control requires that the maximum allowable end-to-end latency needs to be 0.5 – 2 ms and communication service availability needs to be 99.999 percent – 99.99999 percent,” it says.
