The slowdown in the growth of intelligent terminals is a foregone conclusion. Both research institutes and operators are predicting that the Internet of Things will become the next one trillion-level market. IDC predicts that by 2020 the global Internet of Things market will reach 1.7 trillion US dollars; China Mobile also predicts that by 2020 the global Internet of Things market will reach 830 billion US dollars, and the Internet of Things will reach 50 billion connected devices.
Everything is the trend of the Internet, followed by the rise of a variety of connection technologies. As utilities, smart buildings, smart cities and other Internet of Things application scale expansion, the demand for long-distance wireless transmission applications began to grow. As an emerging technology for low-power wide area networks (LPWANs), NB-IoT (Narrowband Internet of Things) has gained the close attention and rapidity of its introduction as if it were the most anticipated connectivity technology in the IoT market. Like Lora, Sigfox technology, which has entered the commercial stage, NB-IoT is about to become a commercial, low-power connection technology.
NB-IoT ecosystem is overwhelming
In fact, NB-IoT standard just confirmed six months time. In June last year, NB-IoT, as an important topic of 3GPP R13, got the RAN plenary approval of its corresponding 3GPP protocol, which means that the NB-IoT standard core protocol has been officially completed after two years. From a vertical perspective, at present, in the field of low-power wide area networks, a complete industrial chain of "bottom chip-module-terminal-operator-application" has formed.
Chip in the NB-IoT the entire industry chain at the core of the core position from the current chip manufacturer's preparations, including Huawei, Qualcomm, Intel, MTK, RDA, ZTE Micro, Datang and other major chip vendors have supported NB-IoT Product planning.
RDA, which started out as a radio frequency, also has a wealth of technology in wireless connectivity. Following the formal acquisition by Ziguang Group in July 2014, in February 2016, Spreadtrum Communications and Ruidicon merged. Under the new architecture, Ruidicon has been given a new positioning of "Internet of Things." Dr. Wang Jingming, vice president of RDA's research and development, told Jiche.com that in the future, RDA will focus on wireless connectivity and information transmission, information processing and information transmission necessary for the Internet of Everything, and will account for more than 85% of the total IoT connection Lightweight IoT technology will be the main direction for future RDA products.
According to set micro-network understanding, with ultra-low power design and high integration, Rui Di Branch NB-IoT chip RDA8909 will be officially mass production in the fourth quarter of this year. RDA8909 supports 2G, NB-IoT dual-mode, through a reasonable planning chip configuration, product coverage is extremely broad. Meanwhile, RDA8909 conforms to 3GPP R13 NB-IoT standard, but also can support the latest 3GPP R14 standard through software upgrade. In addition, another RDA8910, a three-mode product supporting eMTC, NB-IoT and GPRS, is also in the pipeline and production is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2018.
At present, 21 operators worldwide have committed to deploying NB-IoT networks and are expected to deploy 25 NB-IoT networks by the end of 2017. However, judging from the three major domestic carriers, China Telecom has started large-scale field testing of NB-IoT in seven provinces and 12 cities in total in the country and is trying to complete the trial commercial target of NB-IoT by June 2017, And strive to achieve commercialization within the year; China Unicom plans to promote the commercial deployment of NB-IoT in major cities in early 2017, and will start to push forward the nationwide commercial deployment in 2018.
China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, the three major domestic carriers, have released their respective development strategies around NB-IoT. Although they have not yet become commercially available, for industrial chain manufacturers, they must make good products before the market explodes ready. It is understood that RDA is currently actively preparing for the RDA8909 application scenario with operators such as China Mobile.
NB-IoT advantages and challenges
As a technology used in low-rate services, NB-IoT has 5 well-known advantages: Massive connection (50k + user capacity / 200kHz cell); Depth coverage (20dB + more than GPRS coverage); Ultra-low power consumption Battery life of more than 10 years); low-cost (low-speed low-power low-bandwidth low cost); stable and reliable (to ensure the data was successfully 99% recovery rate). This greatly solves the key issues of price, cost and power consumption in the application of long-distance wireless connection.
In contrast LPWAN market at this stage, the most prominent is Sigfox and LoRa two technologies. The former was adopted by Telefónica in February this year around the world, the latter being considered by French operator Orange as a technology that can address the immediate needs of the Internet of Things. Compared with Sigfox and LoRa, NB-IoT is still not commercially available. However, backed by the strong 3GPP mobile ecosystem, NB-IoT is expected to enjoy rapid growth once commercialized.
For the future of Sigfox, LoRa and NB-IoT technologies, Dr Wang Jingming, vice president of RDA research and development, said these technologies co-exist in the short term, but in the long run, NB-IoT will gradually replace the former Both. In the future, the Internet of Things will gradually show the trend of centralized chip and application fragmentation. By the time technology will not be the focus of chip manufacturers' competition, but will start from the service and understanding of the industry more.
Although NB-IoT's market prospects make us energetic, but at this stage still face some problems to be solved. The first is the price war. Although NB-IoT large-scale commercial costs will gradually be reduced to 3 US dollars, or even lower, but the current single connection module also 5 to 10 US dollars, the price is slightly higher. The price of chips supporting Bluetooth, Thread and ZigBee standards is only US $ 2, and even a standard chip price of less than US $ 1 is supported. This price gap has forced enterprises to consider the high cost of NB-IoT at this stage.
Second, NB-IoT has just arrived in the market and is bound to be resisted by other technologies during the commercial phase. NB-IoT is still in its infancy with respect to Sigfox and LoRa, which are already in commercial use. Many technical and market-oriented issues are still to be solved.
Finally, the explosive application of NB-IoT has not yet appeared. Currently more intelligent parking, smart meter reading, smart covers and other applications overall market volume is not big enough, if the delay in finding an explosive market applications, I am afraid it will affect chip manufacturers to further optimize product performance enthusiasm.
Despite the difficulties, domestic operators are very optimistic about the future development of NB-IoT and are actively cooperating with enterprises to promote the industrialization of NB-IoT technology. According to Ji Wei network understanding, Huawei and a number of operators to complete the smart meter reading, intelligent parking system demonstration and verification, and the government is talking about the license plate transformation project; ZTE also with a number of operators to carry out intelligent parking, smart meter reading , Smart covers and security monitoring business; Intel, China Mobile and Ericsson to complete the environmental testing applications. In addition to industry applications, the consumer industry such as white goods manufacturers have begun to use NB-IoT chip for product development.
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