Author: Alberto Campuzano Crevillén
The market size for IoT in transportation was valued at $83.25 billion in 2020 and it is expected to grow to $495.57 billion by 2030 with an expected CAGR of 19.9% from 20211 to 2030 (Monica Chhabra, Aarti Goswami, Vineet Kumar, Feb 2022), is one of the industries with a higher demand for new and innovative IoT solutions.
There are a large number of applications in the Transportation & Logistics Industry that benefit from the use of IoT technologies. Here I’m only mentioning a few of them:
- Preventive Maintenance: Early detection of damages in the vehicle or in the assets being transported, reducing the repair costs.
- Telematics: Extract relevant information ranging from driver behavior to fuel management.
- Tracking: Have full visibility of your vehicles and assets all along the route and protect them from theft.
NB-IoT, since its inception in the 3GPP release 13, was not considered the first option when monitoring mobile devices. Customers tend to use other cellular protocols such as LTE-M, 2G, or other ISM Band-Based Technologies for that purpose. This was mainly because the handover between cell towers is not very efficient when using cellular NB-IoT and has a direct impact on battery life.
However after the new release 17 of the 3GPP in which, for the first time in history, standard NB-IoT connectivity will be expanded into space, mobile use cases have become one of the main applications that can be deployed using Sateliot’s satellite NB-IoT connectivity.
So, why Sateliot’s NB-IoT connectivity from space can be used for mobile applications like Tracking whereas terrestrial NB-IoT connectivity has limitations?
The answer to that question is quite simple: every time one of Sateliot’s satellites passes over an IoT device a new link is created which means that there is not any handover between our satellites and hence, mobile use cases are fully supported.
Now, let’s imagine a real case in which a company wants to track its fleet.
In that scenario, when the vehicle is in the city, where connectivity is abundant, the device will use cellular connectivity that can be LTE-M, NB-IoT, or even 2G. When the device leaves the coverage zone, it will switch automatically to Sateliot’s NB-IoT satellite connectivity.
Unlike traditional satellite operators, Sateliot will not only provide NB-IoT satellite connectivity but will also ensure that customers can track their mobile assets using the best connectivity option available to them.
About the author: Alberto Campuzano Crevillén is a satellite IoT expert specializing in IoT applications in the industries. Connect with him or drop him a line for a talk: alberto.campuzano@sateliot.space
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