Advanced Connectivity for the Internet of Things
Electric Energy T&D Magazine – July/August 2015 – As utilities increase their reliance on ubiquitous data to monitor and operate complex smart grids, advanced connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT) is an important facet of the overall system plan. Read More>>
New On-Ramp CEO: Low-Power Wide Area Technology is the Best Match for IoT
IoT Connectivity Solutions – August 19, 2015 – The former leader of RACO Wireless, which was recently acquired by KORE, was announced as On-Ramp’s new leader July 2. Today at IoT Evolution Expo he talked about On-Ramp’s value proposition and promised significant news next month at CTIA. Cellular networks that underlie many IoT deployments today, he said, offer far more bandwidth than most of those applications require – so it’s like drinking from a fire hose. And the disparity between what IoT needs and what cellular delivers grows wider and wider as cellular network operators move from 2G and 3G networks to 4G LTE and beyond, he said. That excess, he added, comes at a cost. Read More>>
IoT Technology Aims to Optimize Production Chemical Optimization
RigZone – August 21, 2015 – The need of exploration and production companies and service providers to effectively manage production chemicals served as the genesis of a new line of chemical management and optimization products. Read More>>
Operators and vendors join forces to push cellular IoT Networks
Computerworld – August 20, 2015 – Backed by the likes of AT&T, Intel and Qualcomm, industry organization GSMA has launched an initiative to accelerate the roll-out of cellular networks customized for machine-to-machine communications. Read More>>
2.4 GHz – The Ideal Unlicensed Spectrum for Long-Range IoT Networking (Part III)
Supporting the Broadest Global Deployments
The IoT market is global – companies developing applications want to be able to deliver their solution to the widest available market. Similarly, serving the largest available market drives down costs by utilizing common components, infrastructure and so on.
The 2.4 GHz band has a substantial advantage over 900 MHz on this dimension. As shown in the figure below, 2.4 GHz provides a single spectrum choice with virtually global availability, under very similar rules. The 900 MHz band is a more fractured story, with different frequency bands in different geographies, variation in critical rules and some countries, without availability.
Global ISM Bands
More Spectrum Means Greater Capability and Flexibility
In addition to its global availability, the 2.4 GHz ISM band provides a large absolute amount of spectrum – covering 80 MHz of bandwidth. Move available bandwidth provides more capability and flexibility in delivering real-world solutions.
On-Ramp’s RPMA system is architected around a one MHz channel bandwidth. An entire RPMA network can be deployed as a single channel network using only one MHz of the entire 80 MHz of available spectrum. This small channel footprint in the broad frequency band provides flexibility in deployment models to improve the capabilities and performance of RPMA networks. RPMA networks are designed so that additional frequencies can be used to increase capacity, extend coverage, and provide robustness to interference. Up to four independent RPMA networks can exist in the same area providing maximum benefit of channel flexibility for each.
RPMA – Specifically Designed for the Unlicensed Spectrum
The 2.4 GHz spectrum is ideal for delivering the benefits of the On-Ramp Wireless RPMA long-range IoT network with:
- Unparalleled coverage: RPMA breaks through the barrier in wireless communications by delivering wide-area coverage with a simple network architecture. The system’s performance parity and antenna diversity enabled by 2.4 GHz offset the propagation advantages of 900 MHz.
- Global Availability: RPMA technology has the operational advantage of virtually global availability in single frequency band
- More Deployment Options: The 2.4 GHz band results in substantially more available spectrum to provide enhanced deployment flexibility.
If you’re interested in deploying an M2M application, please get in touch with the experts at On-Ramp Wireless.
On-Ramp Wireless CEO John Horn to Deliver Keynote Presentation at IoT Evolution Expo
Horn to discuss game-changing IoT and M2M low-power technologies
San Diego – August 12, 2015 — On-Ramp Wireless, the leading provider of long-range connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced that CEO John Horn will deliver a keynote presentation at the IoT Evolution Expo, taking place August 17-20, 2015. Horn will present, Low Power, High Return: How LPWA is Positioned to Change the M2M Game, on Wednesday, August 19, at 10:55 a.m. PT at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
2.4 GHz – The Ideal Unlicensed Spectrum for Long-Range IoT Networking (Part II)
2.4 GHz vs. 900 MHz – range, flexibility and the global marketplace
Range – Propagation and Other Key Factors
For building long-range IoT (Internet of Things) networks, the cost of connectivity is heavily driven by the coverage that can be achieved by each base station deployed in the network. Conventional wisdom says that long-range applications should use 900 MHz due to better propagation. Simply put, a technology with identical technical characteristics (receiver sensitivity, power output, etc.) will cover a wider area implemented in 900 MHz than in 2.4 GHz. Expressed in link budget, this advantage translates into a roughly 9 dB advantage for a 900 MHz system.
What is Link Budget? Link budget, along with assumptions on path loss, is sufficient to give the area covered for a given probability of coverage and a given indoor/underground penetration value. However, for real-world performance, the trade-off is not that simple. The 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz systems have other differences besides propagation loss that are important to performance of the overall system in providing coverage (See Table). Antenna diversity is a well-known technique for improving the effective link budget performance of wireless systems – two antennas with sufficient separation can be governed by independent fade margins. The separation required is directly related to the wavelength in question – providing a distinct advantage to 2.4 GHz systems. The much smaller separation required makes antenna diversity in IoT scale endpoints possible at 2.4 GHz – an option not even available to a technology implemented in 900 MHz spectrum. The improvement in effective link budget from antenna diversity in On-Ramp Wireless’ RPMA system is roughly 8 dB – almost completely offsetting the propagation advantage of a 900 MHz alternative.
What does this mean for the actual coverage of RPMA? Simply put, given the offsetting effects of these two differences, one can simply use link budget to compare the coverage performance of an RPMA system vs. any system implemented in 900 MHz.
2.4 GHZ vs. 900 MHz Comparison
(Stay tuned for the next week’s conclusion of this article)
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