Making 5G-IoT Development Platform for mMTC: Lessons Learned from Industrial Implementations

Cellular internet of things (CIoT) technologies are recognized as the best match for the industry sector as potential enablers of secured, reliable, and long-range communication. Namely, the narrowband iot (NB-IoT) and LTE Cat-M technologies fall into already proven representatives defined by the 3GPP organization and integrated into the licensed frequency spectrum. Being able to meet the increasing requirements of the customers and the regulation bodies, i.e., 5G ITU-R M.2410, the industry needs to follow the accelerated trends in the CIoT and test new communication modules or even technologies (5G RedCap) to improve the communication parameters of their products. In this paper, we report on the key aspects of the hardware design of the universal development platform for massive machine-type communication (mMTC). The given choices, i.e., platform-related decisions and hardware design, are supported by longterm cooperation with the leading telecommunication operators and distributors, confirmed by successful deployment and real-life measurement campaigns.