LTE IoT Technology Enhancements and Case Studies

Many devices and machines used in diverse applications require ubiquitous connectivity to the Internet through cellular network. These devices have different requirements in terms of their location, data rates, mobility, energy consumption, latency, complexity, power output level, spectrum, and security. These criteria impose specific requirements on the network infrastructure. While some Internet of Things (IoT) enabling technologies exist today that may be able to address the wide area coverage requirement of the IoT devices, they fall short as compared to the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technology in terms of coverage, scalability, interoperability, Quality of Service (QoS), and security. 3GPP Release 13 introduced two categories of IoT technologies called LTE-M and narrow band IoT (NB-IoT). In LTE release, 14, and 15, the enhancements of LTE IoT continued to provide cellular IoT connectivity to more IoT devices and in more diverse applications. In this article, we provide an overview of the evolution from Releases 13 to 15 (a rich technology roadmap toward 5G), and for multiple different use cases discuss the technology requirements that need to be met for each specific application.