How Does 5G Enhance IoT?

Research shows that the cellular Internet of Things (IoT) market is in recovery, with a growth of 7 percent year over year in the first quarter of 2024. 5G provides connectivity for emerging IoT devices and allows for advanced use cases in support of massive, critical, and broadband IoT. Current 4G LTE cellular connectivity using the 3GPP Release 13 standards to connect IoT devices is still prevalent in IoT networks. However, 5G’s high bandwidth, low latency, and better spectrum efficiencies will allow for the connectivity of billions more IoT devices.

Fundamental IoT Protocols

When it comes to IoT, the following fundamental protocols must be considered for proper data routing and continuous communication.

• Connection protocols: Connection protocols take care of device-to-device connection, device to gateway, device to data, gateway to data, and communication between data.
• Data protocols: Data protocols are responsible for the presentation of application layers, including:
  • Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP)
  • Data Distribution Service (DDS)
  • Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)
  • WebSocket
  • Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture (OPC UA)
• Network protocols: Network protocols comprise datalink and physical layers activities, including:
  • Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
  • Cellular, 4G, and 5G
  • Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi HaLow
  • Low-power private wide-area networks (LPWANs)
  • Zigbee and Z-Wave
  • Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP)

5G: Cellular IoT Connectivity Protocols

Cellular connectivity protocols are critical to the performance of IoT devices. Protocols such as CAT-M and Narrowband (NB) IoT are used to support low-power wide-area (LPWA) technologies such as LTE-M, which provides lower device complexity, long battery lifetime, and extended coverage.  LTE-M also allows for the reuse of an LTE installed base. Both NB-IoT and LTE-M are expected to evolve to support 5G IoT applications, services, and devices with seamless migration and connectivity requirements for massive, critical, and broadband IoT use cases.

5G RedCap for IoT

3GPP Release 17 introduced 5G RedCap or New Radio (NR) Light for IoT to lower device cost and complexity and support emerging deployment scenarios. Current IoT device categories for NB-IoT (Cat-NB1) and LTE-M (Cat-M1) can support 4G/5G devices using lower data rates but drive higher cost and complexity for high-data-rate devices expected to deploy in midband frequencies on 5G networks. NR-Light has greater capacity than NB-IoT and LTE-M and allows for broader use cases across enterprise and consumer IoT devices. According to Ericsson, RedCap devices with the lowest possible complexity are expected to reduce complexity for the IoT modem by about 65 percent for low or midband connectivity.

What Are the Challenges Between 5G and IoT?

Challenges exist with any emerging technology. Here are a few associated with 5G and IoT.

• Security: With more IoT devices and increased traffic, the network IoT devices may be vulnerable to novel mobile network cybersecurity threats. Authentication encryption is required as well as regular software updates to ensure secure IoT and network ecosystems.
• Cost: Extending 5G infrastructure to rural areas can be significant and costly because it involves deploying 5G-based stations in less populated areas.
• Device compatibility: Devices must be 5G compatible to work on the 5G network ecosystem. This means devices must be upgraded or in some cases, new devices will have to be created to adapt to the 5G network requirements, and this can be costly to organizations.
• Energy consumption: Battery-operated devices may need to consume more power compared with IoT devices using solely the 4G LTE network.
• Restricted coverage: Coverage gaps might be a hindrance in remote or rural areas due to 5G networks’ requirements to use higher-frequency millimeter waves compared with 4G networks.

5G Future-Proofs Next-Generation IoT Device Connectivity

5G provides the capacity to increase IoT device connectivity and enhance performance via data transfer speed and improved latency. 5G can provide the following benefits:

• Speed: Mass amounts of data sent from sensors to devices need to be transferred at a high data rate.  5G provides the high-speed data transfer that is required to support IoT devices because of its ability to build high-speed connections. 5G networks can transfer data as much as 10 times more rapidly than 4G.
• Reliability: 5G’s lower latency rates reduce transaction response duration and improve lag times between transactions, leading to an improvement in performance and quality of service. For critical IoT use cases, such as in health care and transportation, lower latency rates can be a lifesaver. 4G has a 20-30 milliseconds latency; 5G can reach less than 10 milliseconds, allowing IoT devices to send and receive data with an almost unnoticeable delay.
• Device interactions: 5G will enhance the interaction between a diverse ecosystem of IoT devices because its high-bandwidth capabilities allow for smooth connection between millions of devices. 5G can handle as many as 1 million IoT devices per square kilometer.
• Network slicing: Using 5G to tailor connectivity for network slices will enhance the prioritization and performance of IoT connections by optimizing performance, enhancing the quality of service, and increasing efficiencies for every business use case, allowing for a better way of living and interacting with technological services.

Based on 3GPP standards for 5G IoT use cases, IoT devices must evolve to support next-generation 5G network requirements for machine to machine and low-power IoT devices for critical and latency-intensive use cases while supporting large amounts of data within short periods.

The NETSCOUT 5G Solution

With decades of experience in the industry and a scalable cloud-based platform, NETSCOUT provides a best-in-class solution that can empower communications service providers (CSPs) to achieve end-through-end visibility for any IoT device performance. Our Visibility Without Borders approach works with any cloud, any network, any service, and any technology, and our solutions are 3GPP compliant.

Learn more about NETSCOUT 5G solutions.