How Silicon Technology can Address 5G IoT Challenges

With connectivity at the heart of industry transformation, 5G will have a key role to play — not just in the evolution of communication but in the evolution of businesses and society as a whole. 5G is for example expected to support IoT deployment in order to become an integral part of our economy and lifestyle, enabling to control more devices remotely in applications where real-time network performance is critical. Cellular network providers have already launched LTE network / chipset designed for IoT applications (Cat-M1) in order to support everything from water monitoring systems, to asset trackers, and consumer electronics. Narrowband IoT (Cat-NB1) is the next generation Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technology currently under deployment and will be the foundation of NB-5G development. NB IoT has been designed to work anywhere and can connect low-power devices to the mobile network. Cat-NB1 is optimized to handle infrequent data transfers, which makes it ideal for devices that are deployed in remote locations and only need to transfer data every so often. This presentation will review commercially available NB-IoT chipset solution and discuss how silicon technologies can help to address the three main 5G IoT challenges: price, coverage, and lower power consumption (with a special focus of RF and FEM integration). In this talk, there will be a focus on the customers’ needs, and how these translate to IoT device requirements and solutions especially on RF integration and FEM module aspects. Solutions based on ST silicon technologies are presented.