The 3rd Generation Partnership Project is a collaboration that involves multiple telecommunications companies who were behind the expansion of third-generation (3G) mobile phone system technology. The collaboration now wants to focus its efforts on Industrie 4.0 and focus on communication for the Internet of Things. This involves working on fifth generation technology. The group has released the first specifications for a new radio technology that will be ready to be used in devices by June 2018.
They will be finalising the architecture of systems that will run on fifth-generation communications by December of 2016. The result will be narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) supporting two-way communications that will have low throughput and will be able to function on low-cost devices. Furthermore, the technology will be able to support up to 150,000 devices per single cellular cell. The release will also be able to run alongside existing 2G and LTE networking. This means, finally, GPRS will be quicker as well. Don't you just hate it when your phone barely manages to get internet on GPRS? Now, Release 13 allows for a 20db link budget improvement that will see GPRS perform better under terrible conditions.
Dino Flore, chairman of 3GPP said: "It took us only nine months to standardise the new technology after the study phase. Once again 3GPP demonstrated the ability to quickly respond to the emerging market needs."
Meanwhile, a company named u-blox has released a chip that will be compatible with 3GPP Release 13 (the new 5G standard) that will assist with communications in "smart buildings and cities, utilities metering, white goods, asset tracking, and agricultural and environmental monitoring." It is being considered the world's first cellular NB-Iot (Narrowband) technology. The chip will be the first one to be used by industry leaders Vodafone, Huawei and more. It will be the standard for NB-IoT and the future of the 5G world. It is called SARA-N2 module
Vodafone will be using NB-IoT as soon as 2017. The technology will go by the name LTE-Advanced Pro.
Alex Sinclair, CTO of the GSMA, said: "We are pleased that the industry has moved so quickly to adopt them and that they have now been ratified by 3GPP. Mobile operators have already started a number of pilots around the world and this agreement over common standards will help accelerate the development of commercial solutions and ensure they are in market much faster, providing customers with more choice."
The Internet of Things is going to need lightning-speed communications between devices and this standardisation of communications technology is a good step forward.
Source: PR Newswire
