5 wireless IoT communication trends to watch in 2020

Everything is going wireless. According to a new Gartner forecast, Internet of Things (IoT) connections in the enterprise and automotive markets alone will grow 21% from 2019 to reach 5.8 billion endpoints by 2020.

The coming year is expected to bring many more IoT milestones as new wireless standards expand adoption over existing technologies. At the same time, we will see rising radio resource challenges and innovative approaches to addressing them.

With the IoT space growing rapidly, here are five wireless trends you can expect this year.

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1. The growing popularity of new wireless standards

From 5G and Wi-Fi 6 to Bluetooth 5.0 and standards-based low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) protocols, I believe that wireless standards that were just taking off in 2019 will take a giant leap in maturity and adoption in 2020.

5G is everywhere, and 3GPP is working towards a "full 5G vision" with the release of Release 16, which is expected to be finalized later in 2020. This release includes new technologies for ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) and many improvements in mobility, power consumption, and spectral efficiency over the current release. Devices and equipment that incorporate the new features are further under development.

The new Wi-Fi 6.0 (also known as 802.11ax) not only transmits data 30% to 40% faster than its predecessor, but also has better efficiency and performance in densely populated areas. Bluetooth 5.0 and its derivatives Bluetooth 5.1 and 5.2 enable more accurate location finding, greatly improving range and throughput. In the LPWAN field, operator-based standards such as NB-IoT and LTE-M continue to develop, while new open standards such as ETSI TS103357 have emerged to complement proprietary solutions such as Sigfox and LoRa/LoRaWAN.

2. Wireless applications across vertical industries

The adoption of wireless technologies will continue to increase across all verticals. All wireless technologies have made significant advances over the past few years (e.g., faster speeds, lower latency, higher quality of service), and they are easily available in a variety of products for quick installation and deployment. Wireless solutions are becoming increasingly important, especially in IIoT use cases where connectivity for sensors and telemetry is extremely demanding.

Industrial digitization for improving operational efficiency as well as process transparency and sustainability is still ongoing, which provides huge opportunities for wireless solutions as a whole. In this context, connected devices and sensors become important enablers for back-end machine learning and AI solutions, which heavily rely on the availability and reliability of data to fulfill their promise of intelligent data analysis.

3. Bandwidth demand is increasing dramatically

The exponential growth of wireless devices will inevitably be accompanied by a continued increase in bandwidth usage. To meet this demand, the Federal Communications Commission has made additional licensed wireless spectrum available for telecommunications services. Certain frequencies in the 600 MHz band, which is typically used for television broadcasting, are now available for 5G "low-band" mode. With this, cellular operators will work to extend their networks into the most rural areas, achieving nationwide 5G coverage.

Unlike dedicated licensed bands, unlicensed bands will face increasing congestion from a large number of coexisting wireless networks due to their unlimited accessibility. Radio traffic from technologies such as Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Bluetooth, Thread, etc. has already overwhelmed the 2.4 GHz spectrum, which is unlicensed and available worldwide. Unlicensed Sub-GHz bands with more regional divisions are catching up quickly as more wireless protocols use it for long-range large-scale IoT deployments. At the same time, I believe the challenge of cross-system interference will become increasingly greater.

4. New approaches to promote spectrum efficiency and radio coexistence

Given the increasing strain on limited radio resources, more innovative technologies will be developed and adopted to mitigate interference between adjacent radio systems operating in the same unlicensed band. Gateway on-chip solutions can manage the coexistence of different 2.4GHz technologies to mitigate the risk of performance degradation and data loss. For example, turning off Zigbee when using Wi-Fi, or delaying Wi-Fi transmissions to improve the reliability of Bluetooth messages.

In non-synchronous networks such as LPWAN, advanced techniques on the physical layer are needed to improve spectrum efficiency and enhance robustness against interference from other systems. Specifically, a combination of low bandwidth usage, short broadcast time, and frequency hopping can improve network reliability and scalability by orders of magnitude without compromising battery life.

In 2020, we will see an increase in the adoption of LPWAN technologies specifically designed to address interference issues in the unlicensed spectrum.

5. Increasing use of software-defined radio technology

Software-defined radio (SDR) is an approach to RF communications in which most signal processing tasks are done using software or firmware rather than dedicated radio chips. SDR is an advanced radio technology that requires extensive software development. As a result, not all current wireless solutions incorporate this approach into their designs.

From a user's perspective, SDR-based technology offers great advantages in terms of customization. Modifications or improvements to wireless system functionality can be easily implemented on existing and future off-the-shelf IT hardware through software upgrades on the gateway/base station. More importantly, the SDR approach allows the same hardware platform (i.e., IoT gateway) to support multiple frequency bands and radio protocols to simplify deployment while providing backward compatibility with legacy radio equipment in the field.

As new wireless protocols and standards continue to emerge in 2020 and beyond, SDR technology will quickly gain traction and drive scalability and interoperability in IoT architectures.

Summarize

The wireless IoT landscape is changing at an alarming pace to accommodate the explosive demand for connected devices. While bandwidth demands are skyrocketing, the challenge of radio interference will become more pronounced as more wireless standards vie for their place in the license-free spectrum. Innovative technologies that ensure reliable wireless performance will be key to the long-term survival of a company's wireless infrastructure. At the same time, SDR designs will prove instrumental in designing flexible, high-performance, and future-proof wireless networks.