Let’s Talk IoT Devices: LPWAN Wireless Modules

Hello, and welcome everyone to Soracom’s Let’s talk IoT devices webinar series. In today’s session, we are going to focus on low power LPWAN Wireless modules. My name is Dora. I’m going to be today’s host, and I’m working as an IoT device product manager at Soracom. Let’s look at some housekeeping items. The most important thing is in case you have any questions, There is a built in chat functionality within this webinar tool. So please feel free to raise your question there. We will be more than happy to answer during or after the webinar. It’s also good to know that we are going to send out a link to this recording as well as the deck that we are sharing over here. I’m very happy to have two Japanese IoT experts today with me. Shohei Kawanaka from Murata, as well as Ken Otsuki. From Soracom. He is a fellow employee. Sure. Hey. Would you mind introducing yourself? Thank you for introducing me. Hey. I my name is Shohei. Shohei Kawanaka. I’m a product manager for connectivity module, especially LPWA modules for Murata. I’m based in Munich, Germany. And I’m really happy to to have this opportunity with Soracom. Thank you. We are also very happy to have you here today. Ken, would you like to say a few words about yourself? Sure. Thanks, Dora. Hi. I’m Ken, Ken Otsuki, based in London and UK. In charge of the business development in Soracom and also the head of Global Carrier Relations. We are already looking forward to have this webinar with Murata today. So let’s get started. Let’s indeed get started and look at what we have on the agenda for today. We are going to look at LPWAN and have a brief understanding about what it is, then we’re gonna take a look at Murata’s LPWAN modules and your portfolio. We’re gonna take a look at some use cases as well, and we’re gonna talk about how we can future proof cellular, low power wide area from the same point of view. We’re going to also leave some time a few minutes at least for some questions and answers towards the end of this webinar. So once again, if you have something to ask, please rate within the chat. A few of you might not know Soracom, so let me give a very brief introduction about our company. Soracom is an IoT connectivity and platform service provider. We have been founded in Japan over seven years ago, by former AWS, SaaS, veterans. We have three physical office locations. One in Tokyo, another in Seattle, and the third one in London. We are very proud to enable over five million different IoT devices, as well as over twenty five thousand different businesses worldwide. From startups through small and medium enterprises to large enterprises. We are also very, very proud to have a strong relationship and partnership with Murata. And Murata has actually recently joined the Soracom partner space which is our partnership program. Shohei, would you like to say a few sentences about Murata? Yes. So let me introduce Murata itself briefly. The Murata is the main file manufacturing electrical components and the solutions. Our strength is that we are innovators in electronics. We have a bunch of product portfolios like passive components, capacity, EMI filters, and application specific products, like RF components, connectivity module, sensor, timing device, battery, and the solution as well. The we have a bunch of manufacturing site and the sales network worldwide. Our company was established in the nineteen forty four. So it’s been almost eighty years. Our net sales is around over twelve billion US dollar. That’s sales ninety five percent of our sales is out outside from the Japan, even though our company headquarters is located in Japan. The number of the affiliate is over eighty, and our employees number over seventy three thousand people. Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Shohei, for this introduction. Now look at let’s look at what is LPWAN technology. LPWAN or low power wide area network, it’s actually a wireless, a network technology, that connects low bandwidth and battery powered devices that send low byte rates over long ranges. It consists of a diverse range of differing network technologies that compromise of both licensed and answer unlicensed frequencies. We have a more detailed overview of what type of technologies, what types of low power wide area, belong to this technology umbrella. And on the left hand side, you see the cellular low power wide area networks. LTE-M and Narrowband IoT, we very often refer to these two as license bands. License band. On the right hand side, you can see non cellular, low power wide area, LoRa and Sigfox, and these are the technologies running in unlicensed bands. And on the absolute right hand side, you can see LTE CAT one, or even CAT4 can belong to this terminology, to this technology type. These are the four g’s of the networks. Four G is also a licensed band, similar to LTE-M and Narrowband IoT, and it’s offering a quite high data transfer rate and how it compares to LTE-M and Narrowband IoT. Basically, you equip the LTE base stations or antennas with a different software, and that’s how you enable LTE-M or Narrowband IoT. So the licensed band cellular low power wide area is actually based upon the four g technology. But we very often call LTE-M and Narrowband IoT as technologies paving way already for 5G. Those of you who have been using 2G and 3G, a cellular connectivity for your IoT use cases or applications, You have been probably already eyeing LTE-M and Narrowband IoT because we look at these two technologies. As the successors of 2G and 3G. LTE-M, if we would like to deep dive in these two technologies, it boasts the highest bandwidth of the cellular LPWA as well as the highest data rate and also it offers low latency. It’s ideal for mobile applications and we see that LTE-M is the most widespread on the western part of the world. Narrowband IoT on the other hand offers lower data rates. High building penetrations, that means that it’s perfect for static applications that are deep underground or far far away or remote locations. And when we look at the unlicensed bands, LoRa and Sigfox, they are they serve similar use cases. LoRa is regarded as a bidirectional technology that supports both uplink and and downlink. Sigfox is very often referred as a technology that supports uplink. Both of them have relatively narrow data transfer rates. Then we look at the different considerations of our customers. The technology always brings us to a different choice, depending on what type of use cases you are trying to solve. The as a cellular network connectivity provider, we very often say that Sigfox and LoRa are actually not competing technologies, but they are complementing cellular offers. Kelly, when it comes to tough considerations from our customers, can you summarize for us? What are those? When it comes to choosing one of the right technologies, what are our customers should look at? Yes. So Today, we do not need to say which one which technology is the best. As you already mentioned in the previous slides, each technology has the advantage and the characteristics successful. So it depends on the customer’s use case and applications. The best fit in technology might change. So we put, like, five bullet points in here. So, like, one of the biggest thing is the how much, like, consumption will be important to the customer’s device and applications. So especially since if if you have to deploy the IoT devices quite far away. And if you don’t have any chance to replace the battery, and if we are expected to run more than three years, like five years, then using the the quite high bandwidth technology, like Cat M1 or Cat 4 doesn’t make sense because it consumes much more data and much more power consumptions. So maybe you can run, like, well, up to, like, one week, but you you you you can’t expect more to work more than, like, one year, like, two years in that sense. But in the case of, like, using the, LTE-M or NB-IoT or perhaps, like, say folks’ technologies by having the low power consumption technology. Maybe you can try to utilize these technologies and so on. So and also depends on how much, like, the frequency that you need to send or what’s the actual life data consumption or how much like you would like to make it richer for your application side and so on. So for instance, in the case of, like, a utility device you may simply require to send, like, one byte, like ten bytes per day. So that’s gonna be the lowest data consumptions. But in the case of like asasset tracking devices, you may try to send more data frequently for instance. So so it depends on your target applications, the best fitting technology by change in the end. Thank you for that summary. And we actually collected five different benefits or advantages to cellular LPWAN. Very briefly, they had power efficiency, as you mentioned earlier, long range, wide area coverage, cost effectiveness, and the coverage of of diverse applications. We will deep dive into each and every one of these. Would you mind to to walk us quickly through each and everyone. Yes. Let’s try to take a look from the first one. So the first one is the power, as mentioned. Right? So, yeah, that’s right, as the name says: low power. So power consumption is one of the crucial point for any IoT deployments. So if you have the the power supply with the with that capacity, then, of course, you don’t need to care anything about about consumptions. But in many cases of the IoT device deployments, you always need to work with the battery. And I think the most the the mission critical, the use cases will be, like, utility, like a gas metering, like a smart metering project. So and once the device will be deployed, perhaps you may expect to work the device more than like five years or ten years. So just to try to reduce the power consumptions and how efficiently they manage the power consumption will be one of the crucial points. So this is the first bullet point. And the the next like, two items will be how far you can communicate with your communication modules. So the long range will be one of the the important points. So, of course, if you manage inside with your office, then your existing WiFi or Bluetooth might be fair enough. But if you’re expecting to install your IoT devices quite far away, like, say, like, a mountainside or, like, a country, like, a farm side or even, like, marine marine time, something like the sea or, like, a pea farm fish farming or something like that. In that sense, there is no having the long range, the communication will be quite important. So and that you need to have more wider communication from your module to the actual base stations. Thank you. How about the wide area coverage aspect? Yeah. I think this will be also quite important point as well. So you could try to deploy your IoT applications or devices by using like WiFi or like Bluetooth, then you need to prepare the corresponding, like, base stations to your target areas and the kind of like a coverage so that you can have the the nationwide or the better coverage with your IoT devices. But the installing and the preferring, those the enormous number of these, like, WiFi hotspot like base stations are not so much like a realistic realistic approach. So if you have any plan to deploy your IoT devices, to any of the world like Nationwide in, like, UK, nationwide in the US, nationwide, in Japan. Then the just to try to utilize the existing, like, sale base stations will be one of the best solution. So in that sense, like like LTE-M, like NB-IoT, since the local carriers already have deployed and upgraded their base stations in any of the world already. So And so that means the you already have the the quite wide area connectivity. And you can more focus on your device side of the implementation and the development by having did not buy the area coverage. Brilliant, and the cost effectiveness is also a very important factor. Yes. I think there are mainly, like, a two points for this. So one is the since the LPWA module is been greatly simplified, the module structure inside. So the module price has already been decreased quite a lot. And the one, like, the straightforward thing is the we don’t need to use, like, antenna, like, to which used to be, like, to when it comes to, like, legacy IoT like Cat 4 modules. But in the case of, like, a LTE-M, like NB-IoT, we can reduce the antenna from two to, like, one. So and of course, the module inside the structure has also become quite simplified And because of that, the actual module of, like LTE-M, like NB-IoT has already decreased quite a lot compared to the previous day modules that we have. And therefore, the rest of the cost effective points will be more for, like, the monthly recurring fee. So if you send, like, one gig data, ten gig data for that, of course, you need to pay quite a lot for the data consumptions. But in the case of typical IT device use cases, it’s your expected data consumption will be up to some, like, a kilobytes, like, after like one megabytes or, like, ten megabytes. So in that sense, you can optimize your monthly recurring payment to the carrier’s, like, our carrier partners, and so on. So having the low data consumption will contribute to your data consumptions, and the power consumptions as well. And, also, you can save your course as well. Thanks for this summary. Great. And the last one is about the different and multitudes of applications. Yes. So yeah. As we already have seen the characteristics of the LPWA technologies, there are many applications or the use cases that that we can think about. For instance, like, asset tracking, environmental monitoring, or smart metering, or any other, like, agriculture use cases or perhaps like industrial automations and so on. So but problem next size, we can take, like, more for the details together with Murata. Exactly. And our next slide is actually showing three different layers that consist of of the connected world by LPWA by Murata. Sure, hey, would you mind giving us a glimpse into what’s the base? Of these three different layers? Yep. The actually, we’ve rather has but through covered for each areas, as you can see the first infrastructure, the the we’re very good at the business for the such infrastructure area, like a smart meter, water meter, gas meter, street lighting, gas station, EV charger, such kind of infrastructure. We’ve used several LPWA connectivity. The as a second point, the industrial market the, like, a factory automation, as Kim mentioned, warehouse tracking smart building monitoring, and each of the assets tracking also could be used. And also, the last point consumer grade, existing technology are using the conventional WiFi Bluetooth technology using the smartphone. As you can see. But, like, home health care devices, smart appliances. And also, the wearable devices can also use several API technology. In that case, they don’t need to use the smartphone anymore to transmit the data to the cloud. That also has a rod to make a more happy future. Thank you. Before we deep dive in five additional use cases, LPWA use cases, let’s look at Murata’s modules and how they are different compared to the competitors’ modules. What are the key advantages, Shohei, that you bring on the table? Thank you for bringing up these topics. Though we have mainly four good points as a Murata LPWA module. The first feature is supporting measure word worldwide operators like local m n o’s and also m v n o’s Also Soracom is one of our partners, and those operators can cover really worldwide area that is of a very good point. And the second point is the mobility the Murata module is quite tiny, and it makes a small form factor as a device level. In the sense, the like a a mobility use case, for example, wearable devices, asset any types of the asasset tracking they can make a small phone factor at the end. The certain things is the stability and the reliability point of view. The industry the industrial and infrastructure market, they really need the high reliability devices and good stability as well. You know, smart meters require five to ten years as a lifetime. In the sense yeah. In the sense is such a high reliability module is needed. Murata tested a bunch of reliability tests in the production line and in the design phase as well. So I’m sure that the Murata module is a very good match and a high priority for sure. And the last point is the strong security. The thanks to the our chipset’s partners, the they’re having a very strong security, not only the chipset and also the same connective is related to the same Soracom provide very good security and module level itself. The we have a bunch of the lineup of the secure connection to connect the real server API connectivity. So those four yeah. Thank you. So those four points are combined into the one merge. Indeed, and all of these four points are really valid. And there is one additional, very important aspect of of the Murata modules and that is the size of it as you can as we can see it on this slide. Yes. So the as you can see, It looks like a not metal lid package, but the normally Murata used a resin mold seed, it makes it much more smaller than the existing module existing module using the metal lid construction. That helps to make a small form factor. The model also using the many of the in house components to miniaturize our module in the design phase, the partner also makes a smaller chip sets the such kind of the technology can be utilized. And we also have a very wrong experience to develop the WiFi, Bluetooth, and also, you can see the LoRa module itself. So such kind of the technology are also related to our small cellular connectivity module. Great. In this miniaturization that you are bringing up is gonna be especially relevant. For the first target application that we’re going to be looking at, which is wearables. One brilliant example for variables is when you are trying to track your kid via a smartwatch, for instance. Do you want to give us a deeper example or a or a, yeah, more detailed example on this use case? Yeah. Sure. So for as you send as you can see, the the child location detection or even the elderly monitoring itself, the you can imagine that the every children or every every people not have not have the smartphone every time. So It’s hard to detect their location or their condition continuously. For example, sometimes they don’t have the smartphone and and to go outside, and the smartphone’s battery is low Such things often happen. The compared to that, the where the device having the cellular connectivity can directly transfer the data to the base station the that helps a lot in case of the emergency response system, the and improving health care monitoring to enable the more independent living. And it gives a peace of mind to parents, wider family or even caretakers. Right? Yes, indeed. Cool. Thank you. Let’s look at the next one that is smart metering. What are the main applications that you see under smart metering? Yeah. Sure. Of course, the smart metering has a lot of the devices. But mainly, we are targeting gas metering and water metering. Because electricity meter has the power supply, of course, But the gas meter and the smart water meter doesn’t have it, and they normally use the battery. So in the sense that when data is transmitted, the battery consumption is a really important thing. The if such a connectivity doesn’t have it, a field worker or data collector need to go to the each meter, whether it’s not sufficient it’s not effective Of course. So that’s why they having the connectivity is needed, but even though such connectivity is having a data collector may still be needed in some cases. The having said that’s the cellular connectivity solved such a issue at all. The and in in that case, the I’d say, the efficient monitoring and the high level management of the utility could be possible. And the automation of the of the reading as you said. Yet another brilliant example. Thank you. How do you see asasset tracking and smart labels that Murata is quite famous for. Yes. Exactly. The smart waybill is one of the most notable active products that I can show, the for it is exactly the light solution using the cellular connectivity. Because each postal parcel and each truck should be moved to all all over the world, and server connectivity can only cover such a wider area. For sure. So it makes precise tracking with real time, monitoring condition of the goods, And our system can be possible. The like a theft anti-theft system is really realistic using the such as cellular connectivity. The but our our problem is the low power consumption and the size. The a Murata can help the boss, the consumption power consumption wise and small form factor wise, such features really contribute, help make smart labels smaller. Just out of curiosity, what’s the average life cycle of your smart labels? It depends on the use case, but it’s right create a more than one year, two, three years. Yeah. And — That’s awesome. — transmitting is not so frequent, but for sure, the emergency, timing, and For example, that once the parcel is opened, the transmit should be needed. Such kind of the transmitters could be covered. It’s so important for those companies that keep on resending the same material, the same boxes, for instance, and they still want to keep on tracking it to multiple different destinations. Yeah. A brilliant example. Let’s move forward. We also have environmental monitoring, where low power wide area can play a very important role. And here again, I think we can talk about monitoring the temperature, the humidity, the the wetness of the soil with different sensors. Right? Yes. Exactly. The as Ken mentions the rural area and the count countryside and even the course site, that’s the area the cellular LPWA connectivity cam cover. So in the sense, the as you can see, the like, cargo ship tracking, the bridge inspection, monitoring, the the soil cent so so sorry, monitoring for crops could be possible with a very wide area. And the last one is about point of sales or payment equipment. We see this all over us these days, be it in restaurants, in shops, boutiques, food stands or taxis. We have these mobile terminals, equipped with low bar of wide areas and guards. Right? Yes. Exactly. The we we can see a lot of the POS even every today. As of today. But they are using the WiFi Bluetooth or existing LTE like a Cat M1 or Cat 4 detectors. Mhmm. The that makes really costy. And compared to that, cellular LPWA, like Cat M1, can save a lot of money. And that’s becomes more popular And even for the taxi, like, mobility use cases, the coverage should be really sufficient. So such taxi drivers can also use the POS even for rural area. Without — To — the cell cell phone as well, of course. Indeed. Thank you for sharing these five examples. These were just some of the examples that we have for low power of wide area. We can go on and on, but we saw that these five are some of the most important ones. Moving forward, we would like to talk about how we actually future proof, cellular, LPWAN from the SORACOM site. And what we prepared here is a little overview of how SIM cards has evolved over time. And what we would like to bring up is the future. What it’s gonna look like, and it was hands in hands with that compact miniature word that you have been describing earlier, Shohei, about the modules. Kenny, would you like to to introduce us this slide? Sure. On top of the typical LPWA advantage that we already have discussed today, I think the size was another side of hot keywords today that we talked. And let’s take a look briefly what was the previous SIM evaluation was. So in the beginning, many years ago, the SIM card began as the credit card size, which was really the big one. But as you may know, it became 2FF size, 3FF size, and now it’s 4FF, which is also called nano size. And probably most of the end of customers are using with your smartphone with this one factor. And that these are more for, like, a consumer side of customers and smartphone use cases. And in the case of the IoT, like in-device SIM, Of course, they can still use the plugin card type of sim card, but recently embedded so that type of the e sim is becoming more popular in many the productions and the mass productions devices and all applications, which is normally called MFF2 the size is six by five millimeters. So and so this is the current the evaluation and the kinda like history of SIM card. So the question is what is what’s next? So how it goes? That’s been like becoming much smaller or the that fully virtualizer like a software based solution. So so let’s take a look for that. And What we can introduce today is about the iSIM. The iSIM stands for the integrated SIM. And the as you can see here, the previous plug-in SIM or like eSIM solution was based on the the actual physical connections between your cellular SOC or the between cellular SOC and the cloud SIM or, like, eSIM. So And the other concept of the iSIM is the as you can see, the name integrated The same functions will be integrated inside the cellular SOC and the module. So that means, you don’t need to have the physical SIM card anymore. But eventually, the SIM card functionality will be moved and put into the the module. But the technology will try to keep the same be deliver with the previous SIM card, like eSIM. So that is briefly the introduction of iSIM technology. Out of curiosity, what will be the major benefits of iSIM other than the small size, the compact size and being embedded into into the actual module. Yeah. Let’s take a look about what is the the advantage of, like, the end of hit seven. That’s as well. So, yeah, as we already have discussed, the size will be one of the the benefits. Because the even like eSIM, it’s already became much smaller compared to the call size of SIM card. But for some specific use case for the IoT customers like utility or, like, wearable devices or some other, like, asasset tracking devices. Sometimes, then the customer feel the current MFF2 of 6 by five millimeters still too much big. And they just want to make it smaller to make available, their device will be much much smaller. So and having this kind of iSIM footprint was the one of the challenging. So but in the case of the iSIM technology, we can get rid of all the footprint to, like, sim card slot from your devices. So just to try to make it small will be one of the the biggest the advantage of the icing. And, of course, not only about the size, but we can expect that’s the the whole the the total cost reductions. From the cost point of view, of course, you will not purchase the physical SIM or eSIM anymore. So simply you can reduce this kind of like the physical component cost. And also, you can get rid of all the, like, soldering or SIM card handling. Cost from the from what you had with eSIM, as we’ve seen before. So this kind of physical footprint and getting rid of the production the part of the production scheme will be another side of things. And the also, since you will not purchase sync other like eSIM. Then you can also skip many, like, the a somewhat complicated supply chain wise importing, exporting using, and try to pay, like, tax wise, and the shipping, and so on. So so this can, like, supply chain simplified in the supply chain will be another side of the cost effective and the merit by using iSIM solution. And the also, we talked about security a bit today. But since iSIM itself is the standardized technology, and that which also mandates to have the physical secure element inside as the hardware solution. So so I assume it’s not the fully, like, software based solution. But we can also still ensure the security level from the software point of view and also the hardware level. So that’s another side of the benefit by using iSIM technologies. Thank you so much for this summary. I think this is something that many of the IoT ecosystem players are looking forward to testing and commercializing as well. Yep. Alright. What’s left is to look at our next steps. We would like to show you where you can find more information about Murata’s products. And you see this link here which is going to bring you to the developer documents of Murata, where you can see the data sheets, the hardware design guides, frequently asked questions, different videos. So feel free to come here, click around, and familiarize yourself with one of our own products. On top of this, we are also inviting you to come and look at our soracom dot io website There we have multiple blog posts as well as another webinar on loop our wide area and how you can maximize your IoT device battery life. Via PSM and EDRx. In case you have questions, about our soracom products, feel free to connect us to contact us via soracom.io/contact, our colleagues will be more than happy to to reach out to you. And I think this is the moment where we can take a look at if there is any unanswered question in the chat. Feel free to raise Any type of question, we are here to answer them. And for today, this was the last piece. We thank you for your attention for staying with us. I thank you, Shohei and Kenny, for the interesting discussion. And I hope many of you will join us for the next episode of the Let’s Talk IoT device series, which we will air most probably during the early autumn. Thank you, Dora. I’m really proud to have this collaboration with Soracom. And as you said, the next autumn we will have a a next session, next webinar regarding the iSIM module. The that means that the listener, literally, it can get the real iSIM module on your site and enjoy the our module with Telkom connectivity for sure. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. Thank you, Shohei. Thank you, Kenny, once again. Thank you. Have a great day, everyone. Thank you so much.