NB-M2M

Smart Grid, Smart Home, Smart City and Industry 4.0 need a lot of sensor data. However, the sensors, which collect this data, are often at locations, which are hard to reach with cables and cable installation is usually expensive. Connecting the Sensors with wireless technologies allows fast and easy use of the sensors. Therefore, the wireless transmission of sensor values provides enormous advantages.

For wireless sensors the data rate is rarely important. More important are usually high energy efficiency, reliability, and coverage. A possible solution that provides these features is narrowband (NB) communication. Narrowband-technologies allows the efficient transmission of rare and small data packets (for example, average temperature every hour). Such small packets are important for Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication. This M2M communication is a necessary building block for new trends such as Smart Grid, Smart Home, Smart City and Industry 4.0.

There are many technologies for narrowband communication, which we considered in this project. Most important are LoRa, Sigfox and NB-IoT (Narrowband – Internet-of-Things) as upcoming standards for the interconnection of many devices in the “Internet-of-things”. The use of these technologies will make mobile-sensor applications drastically simpler and, thus, allow visionary innovations. Examples for this are: intelligent parking management, automatic reading of water/power meter (smart meters), environment monitoring (for example, of rivers). However, many companies have no experience with wireless communication and cannot simply build systems based on narrowband communication. With the NB-M2M testbed Salzburg Research (SRFG) took the technological lead in the area. Companies in Salzburg got early access to NB-M2M and can build solutions based on Salzburg Research’s knowledge. In addition to setting up a testbed, we also provided a test and measurement framework. We provided engineering documents, which allow companies (mostly small and medium sized) to expand their existing systems and develop new applications based on narrowband technologies.

The following information is only available in German:

Hilfe bei der Auswahl einer geeigneten drahtlosen Kommunikationstechnologie: NB-Recommender Nachbericht zur Veranstaltung: “Drahtlose Schmalband-Kommunikation im Umfeld des Internet der Dinge und Maschine-zu-Maschine-Kommunikation” Die Präsentationen zu den Vorträgen finden Sie hier.

Publikation: Schmalband Maschine-zu-Maschine Kommunikation. Ein Handbuch. Dieses Handbuch gibt Empfehlungen, die es Unternehmen (vor allem kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen) ermöglichen ihre bestehenden Systeme weiter zu entwickeln und innovative Anwendungen auf Basis der Narrowband-Technologien zu entwickeln. Kostenloser Download: hier