Vodafone pilots NB-IoT by connecting water meters in Valencia
Vodafone and Aguas de Valencia are piloting Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) to connect water meters in the Spanish city of Valencia. Vodafone regards the extended coverage and low power consumption offered by NB-IoT as ideal for the water metering market.
The two companies are using the technology to collect data from inaccessible water meter locations, such as basements and behind metal grates. In many of these locations, it can be difficult to get a GSM signal.
Phase one of the pilot, which was conducted in the first half of 2016, used a pre-standard version of NB-IoT and operated in the 900 MHz spectrum band in standalone mode. The testing in 70 water meter locations in the area of Moncada focused on the extended coverage capabilities of the technology.
The second phase of the Aguas de Valencia pilot leverages a NB-IoT network based on 3GPP standards and commercial water meters from multiple vendors with integrated NB-IoT connectivity capability. For the pilot, Vodafone is using Huawei chipsets and software, and u-blox modules.
In January 2017, Vodafone Spain commercially launched its first NB-IoT product, providing coverage in Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona and Bilbao. Vodafone has plans to extend coverage to Seville and Malaga in the near future.
Key learnings
In phase one of the pilot, the coverage provided by NB-IoT has been in line with Vodafone’s expectations, delivering a signal in all of the 70 test locations. The technology has achieved the target of a 20 dB connectivity link budget beyond that delivered by GSM.
After initial debugging, NB-IoT has also proven very reliable. Vodafone has found that, on average, just 0.5% of the hourly messages sent by the connected meters were not received.
The pilot has confirmed Aguas de Valencia’s view that NB-IoT will significantly increase the efficiency of meter readings and could potentially be used to enable additional services, such as leak detection in the water distribution network.
Next steps
Vodafone Group has built a centralised, global NB-IoT capability that will be able to support services in multiple markets, as operating companies upgrade their existing LTE base stations to support NB-IoT.
Vodafone plans to launch NB-IoT services commercially during 2017 across multiple markets with a view to supporting a wide range of applications, including utility metering, smart city services and agricultural solutions, such as remote controlled irrigation systems, environment monitors and livestock trackers.