Cellular connectivity has been driving a data rate race for the last decade, bringing mobile broadband connectivity to millions and bringing the smartphone into the centre of our digital lives. Whilst standards bodies and chip vendors continue to move towards gigabit throughputs at the opposite end of the spectrum a new breed of low throughput standards are starting to emerge in reediness to connect the billions of IoT devices we expect to see deployed in the coming years.
Efficient implementation by designers and developers is key. With the need of IoT devices need to meet strict cost and power requirements the underlying SoC architecture is critical. In this whitepaper together with ARM partner and LTE-MTC experts Mistbase AB (www.mistbase.com), we examine the implementation of an LTE Cat-M physical layer on an ARM based platform, taking the reader through the implementation and design considerations.
Whether you are deploying the tiniest of ultra-efficient connected end nodes or a secure high-performance gateway or cloud platform, the scalable efficiency of ARM technology enables an optimized balance between performance, cost and power, and the quickest path to market.
This paper addresses the technical possibilities of the hardware and software architecture for terminals based on LTE Cat-M. We will provide comparisons that highlight the differences between LTE Cat-M and other categories. We will also describe the possible differences in architectures between categories and how we can benefit from the proposed changes in LTE Cat-M. We will also address the LTE-NB (LTE Narrow Band) proposals that exist in 3GPP and compare them with existing technologies. Other, competing technologies will also be compared to the LTE categories and proposed categories, highlighting pros and cons.