Advantages of LTE-M | disadvantages of LTE-M
This page covers advantages and disadvantages of LTE-M. It mentions LTE-M advantages or benefits and LTE-M disadvantages or drawbacks.
What is LTE-M?
Introduction:
LTE-M follows 3GPP specifications similar to LTE technology. LTE-M stands for Long Term Evolution for Machine-Type Communications.
It is mainly developed to fulfill cellular IoT device objectives such as low device cost, deep coverage,
longer battery life, higher cell capacity and so on. LTE-M along with NB-IoT are two LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) technologies
designed and developed for IoT applications to transmit/receive small amounts of data using lower bandwidth at low costs.
There are number of applications in which these technologies are being used which include smart buildings/cities,
healthcare, people/asset/animal tracking, pollution monitoring and so on.
There are different categories of LTE-M devices viz. Cat-0, Cat-M1 and Cat-M2 as per different 3GPP releases.
LTE-M Cat-0, Cat-M1 and Cat-M2 follow 3GPP TS 36 series of rel.12, rel.13 and rel.14 respectively.
The figure-1 depicts LTE-M system architecture and changes required from LTE architecture. LTE-M category Cat-M1 features are mentioned in the table below.
Refer LTE-M tutorial >> for more information.
| LTE-M Cat-M1 Features | Description |
|---|---|
| Bandwidth | 1.4 MHz (Maximum 6 PRBS are allocated in DL/UL equivalent to 1.08 MHz) |
| Peak Data Rate (DL/UL) | 1 Mbps |
| Coverage | Upto 11 Km |
| Duplex modes | HD-FDD, FD-FDD, TDD |
| Number of receive antennas | 1 |
| Transmit power | 20 dBm |
| Advanced power saving modes | PSM, eDRX |
| Modulation (Highest) | 16-QAM |
| Coding scheme (DL/UL) | Turbo code |
| Spatial Layers (Max. in DL/UL) | 1 |
| Maximum TBS (DL/UL) | 1000 bits |
| CE Modes | Mode-A(Mandatory), Mode-B (Optional) >>. |
| LTE-M Device Categories | Cat-0, Cat-M1, Cat-M2 >>. |
Benefits or advantages of LTE-M
Following are the benefits or advantages of LTE-M:
➨As mentioned above it is used for
IoT applications requiring small amount of data transfer using low bandwidth at low costs.
➨It offers very good coverage specially in USA.
➨As it uses TCP/IP, the network can be connected to any server.
➨It offers faster data rates.
➨LTE-M system is designed to be very power efficient and hence devices will
offer longer battery life. The power saving modes such as PSM and eDRX are employed for
this purpose.
➨It is easy to deploy and it is interoperable with LTE networks.
➨It supports capacity to accommodate large number of devices per cell.
Drawbacks or disadvantages of LTE-M
Following are the drawbacks or disadvantages of LTE-M:
➨System costs are higher than some LPWA technologies.
➨IPSec is not incorporated.
➨IPR risk and certifications are few of the concerns.
➨Carrier firmware upgrades consume power.
➨It can not be used for large amounts of data.
➨It does not offer very high speed data transfer unlike other
cellular technologies such as 4G, 5G etc.
Advantages and Disadvantages of other wireless technologies
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