Orange pilots LTE-M for wearables and EC-GSM-IoT for environmental monitoring

Global operator, Orange, is testing LTE-M-enabled wearable devices that can measure an individual’s movement, heart rate, temperature and other health-related information. Orange is also piloting EC-GSM-IoT to connect sensors that can measure environmental conditions, such as temperature, humidity and air pollution.

Orange sees EC-GSM-IOT as particularly suitable for emerging markets that are heavily reliant on GSM. The focus in Europe is on testing LTE-M. As both technologies can be easily activated through software upgrades on the operator’s existing networks, they potentially provide fast and viable solutions for the group’s operations across both developed and developing markets.

In Europe, all of Orange’s existing LTE base stations can be adapted to support LTE-M via a straightforward software upgrade. Orange and its partner Sony have equipped a small number of users with prototype wearable devices, which are transmitting data every 15-60 minutes using a LTE-M network provided by Ericsson. Sony plans to continue to refine the features of these intermediate prototypes, which support a wide range of functionality including low power GPS-based location finding, following the results of the pilot with Orange and similar trials with other operators.

Separately, Orange envisages that EC-GSM-IoT will be deployed in Africa to support smart city, smart building and smart agriculture applications. For example, farmers may deploy several connected sensors in a field to help determine when is the best time to plant and harvest particular crops. For the pilot, Orange has configured several sensors, which are equipped with a Sierra Wireless module, to transmit data at hourly intervals via a EC-GSM-IoT compatible base station provided by Nokia.

The objectives of the pilots

Orange is exploring whether EC-GSM-IoT and LTE-M can deliver their respective target coverage improvements of 20dB beyond GSM and 15 dB beyond LTE, and what that will mean for customers in practical terms.  The operator is also monitoring the network impact of the traffic and signaling produced by large volumes of sensors and wearable devices. Both EC-GSM-IoT and LTE-M are designed to generate less signaling traffic than existing technologies.

Orange and Sony are also particularly interested in the energy consumption of the wearable devices in various different modes, and how the resulting battery life might impact their usage by consumers. At the same time, the pilot is designed to assess which functions consumers most value in a wearable device. Lastly, Orange is also measuring the end-to-end latency delivered by LTE-M to see how long it takes for a server to respond to a message delivered by a wearable device showing that a specific metric, such as a number of steps, has exceeded a pre-set threshold.

Next steps

Once these use case-orientated pilots are completed in the first half of 2017, Orange plans to conduct customer-orientated LTE-M pilots in Europe, incorporating additional use cases such as smart metering. The timeframe for commercial deployment will depend on the maturity of the full value chain, including modules, devices, networks and the integration of these technologies into existing commercial systems and distribution channels.