SK Telecom and Nokia this week showed off low-power LTE technology that they claim can extend the battery life of an IoT device to more than 10 years.
The demonstration took place at a testbed at one of SK Telecom’s R&D centres using a Nokia base station and IoT modems supplied by GCT Semiconductor.
The modems connect to the radio network in half-duplex mode – where signals are transmitted in one direction at a time, rather than both directions simultaneously – thereby reducing the cost and complexity of the modems themselves. They also incorporate power-saving mode, which switches off the modem when there is no need to transmit data.
"With this trial, we have successfully verified the capabilities of our IoT technology in resolving challenges posed by power supply and inefficient battery use, which are obstructing the widespread adoption of IoT devices," said Jin-hyo Park, SVP and head of SK Telecom’s network technology R&D centre, in a statement on Tuesday.
Nokia predicts the Internet of Things will boast 50 billion connections by 2025, and therefore power management will be a critical element in what the vendor calls the ‘programmable world’.
Andrew Cope, head of Korea at Nokia Networks, said this week’s demonstration "underlines our focus on setting the platform for the global adoption of LTE as a technology-of-choice for IoT."
Indeed, Nokia is a big fan of narrow-band LTE (NB-LTE), a technology that it claims can support data transmission on as little as 200 kHz of spectrum.
