Cellular Internet of Things: Use cases, technologies, and future work

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized how we live and work by connecting everyday devices to the Internet. As the demand for IoT devices grows, a reliable and efficient communication infrastructure to support these devices has become crucial. Cellular IoT (CIoT) has emerged as a promising solution to this challenge, offering a low-cost, low-power, and scalable communication network for IoT devices. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of CIoT technology in response to the growing demand for IoT applications with low latency, high coverage, low power consumption, high device connection, and low cost. The four major CIoT technologies standardized by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) organization are investigated, including extended coverage global system for mobile communications IoT (EC-GSM-IoT), long-term evolution for machine-type communications (LTE-M), narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), and recently, new radio reduced capability (NR-RedCap). These technologies are analyzed regarding their fundamental focuses, features, use cases, requirements, and future work. In addition, we provide a comparative study of these types of IoT technology to assist researchers in understanding the available options and their potential limitations. Finally, open challenges are discussed to direct future research in the field. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.