Hello. Welcome to this webinar, improving power efficiency with network-side control for IoT devices. I’m Markus from Soracom, and I will guide you through this technical What will be part of this webinar? I will give you a short introduction to eDRX Then we will take a look at the Sony Spresense board, which is mounted on its LTE-M extension board. As well, we will take a look at the used Otii Arc measurement device, and the Soracom API, which is used to change the desired values. After a short, wrap up, we will take a look at the key takeaways. If you ever had the need to change an implemented eDRX value for devices in your field due to maybe changed environment. This demo is quite interesting for you because we will show you how to change the eDRX value for a device via network-side control. What is eDRX in general? eDRX is the extended way of discontinuous reception, which is nothing else than switching off the receiver part of a cellular module. And due to this deactivation of the receiver part, you will save power. By default, this is every one point two eight or two point five six seconds in standard LTE-M network. And, to be able to extend this time to, for example, five seconds, ten seconds or up to forty-three minutes, eDRX was introduced into the standards. Taking a closer look at the eDRX timing now. We will see, the power consumption over time behavior, for a device, which is not using any eDRX, you can see this idle mode on the right side. So we have a specific power consumption over time. And, within that time the UE is reachable. So when we activate or enlarge the eDRX setting now, we will deactivate, the receiver part for a specific time. And then it will be activated again for a specific time. So the deactivation, cycle length is the eDRX cycle length and within the so- called paging time window, the receiver part is enabled and is able to receive data. So we’ve got a non reachable part then when we activate eDRX and a part, where we are reachable, which is within that paging time window. Which tools do we use, in our setup? So we do have the Sony Spresense microcontroller board. Which is programmed, in our example, using the Arduino coding environment, which is mounted to the LTE-M extension board. That board has an on board antenna, for example, and contains a SIM slot in which we put, the Soracom SIM This pack is able to connect to LTE-M networks worldwide and of course, use the eDRX power saving functionality. The whole setup is powered by Qoitech Otii Arc. And, we use that device and it’s going to visualize, the changes and the power saving. Functionality, on the Sony Spresense. And, of course, we use, the Soracom SIM card, which is inserted, the LTE-M extension board of the Sony Spresense, as well as the Soracom console and the API. There are some prerequisites to be considered. The device and the visited cellular network need to support eDRX. Some network operators, define a minimum eDRX value. We would not be able to be below this minimum value. And of course, the device itself needs to have eDRX enabled. So the key feature now is that we will push eDRX values to a device via an API call. This is done via this normal network behavior that the network is a master and will overwrite, the requested value from the device. This will give us a possibility, especially for old implementations to anyway change the eDRX settings. Finally, it gives us a flexibility in the application setup, making it able to lower the power consumption, extend battery lifetime and have some cost savings. Soracom API can be accessed via its GUI or via a simple command shell. To set the values, we will use the put configuration parameters command. And, we need to enter the related group ID as well as the requested values within the body section. And after pushing the values, we will see the reply of the API if the values are adapted accordingly. So what will happen after we set the values via our API, the UE, the Sony Spresense board. As soon as this, powered on, it will attach, to the LTE-M network. And, this will cause an update location request to the Soracom HSS, which is kind of home location register. In the answer to that request, we will put the desired values. Which are then delivered, to the Sony Spresense board in the attach accept message. So and how can we be sure that the device is, setting the requested, values? Of course, that’s only possible via a suitable measurement device. In our example, the Otii Arc from Qoitech. This is a Sony Spresense board with a soldered, plug for the power supply. At the bottom is the LTE-M expansion board. You can see the module here, and I will insert a SIM card. To the SIM card slot. That’s it. Now, I will connect the power cable to So sort of plug like this, and we are able to plug the power supply. Okay. It’s now connected to the Otii Arc. Plugging the power supply cables into the Otii Arc is not an issue. Just red or not. And black on black like this. So this is our setup. Now I will show you the technical demo part. On the upper left of the window, You’ll see the hardware setup. The Sony Spresense board mounted to the LTE-M extension board. Where the inserted Soracom SIM card is, powered by the Otii Arc. On the left side of the screen, There’s the Otii Arc application where I can activate the device and start the recording. On the upper right, we have the Soracom console showing the status of the inserted SIM. I called it Spresense, which is assigned to a group called eDRX two. And in the lower right, let me see, GUI of the API. Which we use now to check which eDRX values are configured at the moment. As well. I’ve opened the Harvest window because the application which was running on the Sony Spresense board will connect to the network, read the value of the eDRX, which is set. And we pass it to Soracom Harvest. So currently, I was in the last run. The eDRX value thirteen and the paging time window three was passed to Harvest. So let us check if this is still the configured value. For this, I need the group ID of the assigned group. This is a group ID. Copy it. And search for The group functions. Alright. Get group. Then set the group ID and file. And what we see here is the paging time which is set up. And, the eDRX cycle length, which is exactly what we saw on Soracom Harvest: thirteen and three. Let us now adapt these values and start the device. For this, we need to use a put configuration parameters function. I paste again the group ID And the name space is Soracom Air. I’m entering the values which should be set. So I want to set eDRX cycle length, value three, and paging time window cycle. Three as well. What? The values of this setting. The eDRX cycle length value was thirteen. So one eDRX cycle was two thousand and forty-eight seconds long. Now I change it to three, which is forty seconds. And the paging time window. I want to change to three as well. So the paging time window will be five point one two seconds in the wideband LTE-M mode. Okay. So I fire this command. And I see a positive response, which with the changed values. If I now power the device, the changed values will be pushed to the device. In the answer to the attach request. Okay. So let us check. So, for this, I will start a measurement. And I will power on. Now, let me see. That’s the device starting. These controls, I can mark an area, for example, and extend it. Okay. Device has started. This is connected to the Rx interface. And now it’s already in RRC release status, so not connected anymore. And here, see our first, yeah, paging time window. If I check the Soracom console. It shows me the online status of the device. And if I check Harvest, There is the new data push. eDRX value three, paging time window three. So let us check if, there’s already a second paging time window. And as we can see, paging time window is exactly as requested, five point one two seconds. And between two paging time windows, there should be the eDRX cycle length, which is forty seconds. Yes. So in case we push another value, of course, the changed value will be displayed here. To shorten this a little bit, I already recorded different paging time windows and eDRX values. For example, eDRX value eight and paging time window three. So the paging time window is the same as in my last measurement, five. Five point seconds or eDRX value seven and paging time window seven, eDRX value four, paging time window six. As you can see, the device is adapting to the changed values. Which shows that we are able to change the eDRX values from the network via an API push. If we are now comparing the different measurements, Let me enlarge this application. Let me first show you how it looks like without any eDRX. So this is how power consumption is looking like without any eDRX setting. So this standard value from one peak to the next is for LTE-M, one point two eight seconds. And I mark, a sample time frame. Let’s take one minute. Thirty seconds, for example, within that one minute and thirty seconds, you can see in the upper right corner, the energy consumption is one point four five milli watt hours. So we are able to move this, and it’s always around one point four. Five to four milliwatt hours. Let us now use the first eDRX measurement, which I recorded here. You can already see a difference. Where eDRX is active, there are no receiver peaks anymore. And in the paging time window time, we see the receiver peaks. So having this value set within the same time frame. It’s still one minute thirty seconds. We only have one milliwatt hours power consumption. We can move it from so it’s always around one milliwatt hour. Let us enlarge the eDRX value. Okay. Catching two paging time windows. Checking. Small reduction only, but it’s less, it’s nine hundred eighty six micro watt hours. Let us take another one. eDRX eight, paging time windows three. As you can see now, it’s not possible anymore to get two paging time windows within our one minute thirty time frame. That’s why it only can take one, and it’s going down to nine fifty micro watt hours. And there’s even a simpler way of comparing the different measurements. We just need to click and activate all these measurements here and then go on to the upper right corner and here you see the comparison for the selected window, exactly all at the same time. One of them. So what are the key takeaways? The power saving capabilities of eDRX might not be that drastic as what’s achieved via PSM where the whole device is put into the sleep mode, but every single piece counts. So the more you are able to reduce the power consumption via eDRX, the longer the battery will last, and the better your carbon footprint of your IoT application will finally be. eDRX is mainly good for devices which are mainly sending data and rarely receiving them because we disable the receiver part. And especially devices which need to adapt to certain conditions, they will benefit from being able to adapt their eDRX settings via this API push. This is a link to our Soracom store. Where you are able to purchase the used device together with a Soracom SIM, within the available countries. If you’re interested in the used power analyzer, the Otii Arc, we are searching for information regarding power analyzers, battery testing, on battery life estimation, visit our partner’s website, Qoitech.com. If you are searching for more information about Soracom or you want to get connected, just visit us on our website, Soracom.io. We can arrange your consultation with a specialist.
