There has been lot of confusion among different terminologies that the industry uses for the new features / technologies introduced by 3GPP as part of Release 12 and 13 to support Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) IoT devices.
Martin Sauter has written a series of blogs explaining the differences between Cat-0, Cat-M1 (usually called LTE-M) and Cat-M2 (called the NB-IoT) devices
The Cat-M1 and Cat-M2 (NB-IoT) devices technically address the LPWAN IoT market. Beyond these there is another term that is constantly used - Cellular IoT Optimizations
Cellular IoT Optimizations refers to the work done by the 3GPP SA2 (the System Architecture group) for the optimizations on the EPC (evolved packet core) network to support the Cat-M1 and Cat-M2 devices. The following are the key optimizations
- Control Plane Optimizations which include
- Non IP PDN
- Data over NAS which is sent over SRB for both IP and Non IP PDN
- Support for Non IP PDN over SCEF path
- No need for DRB setup
- Serving PLMN Rate Control
- APN Rate Control
- User Plane Optimizations which Include
- Support for RRC Suspend state when UE is in EMM-IDLE
- Efficient IDLE-Active state transition
- Support for both IP and non IP PDN over user plane path
- APN Rate Control
- Support for change from CP optimization to UP optimization path at run time
The stage 2 aspects of Cellular IoT Optimizations are defined in 3GPP TS 23.682 spec in release 13. In the subsequent posts I will delve into the use case and details of the control plane and user plane optimizations.
Cellular IoT is a way of connecting physical things (like sensors) to the internet by having them piggyback on the same mobile networks as smartphones. Thanks
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