Cat.x Cellular Development Framework

This topic describes the information about cellular product development.

Concepts

Cellular wireless networking establishes mobile communication between devices with cellular capability and networking hardware. It features great mobility, session handover, and auto roaming.

Backed by the base station subsystem and network switching subsystem, cellular network services provide mobile voice and data communications.

Cellular IoT standards

Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is still used for many IoT applications. However, it is pretty much outdated and more and more mobile carriers shut down their GSM networks. GSM might be phased out in the future.

On the other hand, 3GPP develops LTE-based enhanced standards for IoT connectivity.

Enhanced standards developed by 3GPP

• LTE Cat 1 with a download peak rate of 10 Mbit/s.
• LTE Cat 0 with a download peak rate of 1 Mbit/s.
• LTE Cat M1 with a download peak rate of 1 Mbit/s and optimized low power consumption.
• LTE Cat M2, also known as narrowband IoT, with a download peak rate of only a few hundred kbit/s but featuring improved power consumption and indoor coverage.

Since LTE is already used in 4G cellular services, the above four technologies do not need completely new infrastructure and can be deployed as a software upgrade to existing cellular services.

The base station can simultaneously process the traditional LTE networks, LTE Advanced networks, and the enhanced cellular IoT networks.