RFCellular IoT Kit Vendors: GSM, LTE, 5G, LoRaWAN, and NB-IoT
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This page covers Cellular IoT Kit vendors used for GSM, LTE, 5G, LoRaWAN, and NB-IoT based cellular technologies. It mentions popular manufacturers or vendors of cellular IoT kits with their benefits (i.e. advantages) and features.
Introduction
Cellular IoT kits are developed to provide cellular and LPWAN network connectivity as per deployed technologies in the region. The common low power cellular technologies include EC-GSM-IoT, LTE-M, NB-IoT, and 5G NR (New Radio) etc. The common LPWAN technologies include LoRaWAN, Sigfox, DASH7, Weightless etc.
There are many applications of cellular IoT kits, which include environmental monitoring, smart city applications, smart building systems, precision agricultural applications, Oil/Gas industries, digital signage, cloud computing and so on.
The kit can be used to interface various sensors such as temperature, humidity, soil, ambient light, oil/Gas, motion, proximity, level, load, acceleration etc. as per specific applications.
Advantages or Benefits of Cellular IoT Kit
The figure depicts a cellular kit and its connectivity diagram. As shown, the kit connects with a cellular network using operating frequency and transmit power as per RF planning. It can be connected with a cloud platform via a cellular gateway. MQTT or HTTP protocols are used to connect the cellular kit with the IoT cloud platform.
A number of cloud platforms have been developed by many companies for providing IoT services. Mobile applications and/or web applications are developed for remote monitoring of the IoT system and its parameters.
Following are the generic advantages or benefits of the cellular kits:
- It helps to connect seamlessly with a cellular network from anywhere as per supported cellular technologies.
- It can connect using MQTT/HTTP protocol with popular cloud platforms such as Google Cloud, Amazon AWS cloud, Microsoft Azure, ThingSpeak IoT cloud and so on.
- The kit consumes low power and hence supports long battery life. Some IoT kits can be powered using an AC to DC adapter.
- The kits are usually designed at a lower cost so that everyone can afford it for device-to-cloud connectivity applications.
- It offers a secured connection with a cloud server or end applications or third-party services.
- It interfaces various sensors and devices using UART, SPI, I2C, USB, I2S, ADC (Analog input), GPIOs etc.
Manufacturers or Vendors of Cellular IoT Kits
The following table mentions manufacturers or vendors of cellular IoT kits for various technologies.
| Cellular IoT kits | Vendors or Manufacturers |
|---|---|
| LTE-M kits | • Nimbelink (Skywire LTE-M1 Development Kit) • Sequans (Monarch GM01Q-STMOD expansion board) • Link Labs (LL-LTE-M-VZN-SE Development Kit ) |
| NB-IoT kits | • ublox (EVK-R4 supports LTE Cat-NB1 technology), There are modules which supports both LTE cat M1/NB1, Visit website or local vendor for more information. • Exelonix GmbH, NB-IoT kit with Vodafone SIM, uses ublox 211 modem • Waveshare (Part no : SIM7020E NB-IoT HAT, supports communication protocols such as MQTT, CoAP, LWM2M etc. It can be controlled using AT commands.) • L-Tek, d. o. o. Slovenia, L-Tek SIM7020 NB-IoT (Based on SIMCOM SIM7020E) |
| Dual LTE-M and NB-IoT kits | • Arduino (Model : MKR NB 1500, Uses SAMD21 microcontroller, u-blox SARA-R410M-O2B radio module, Interfaces : UART, SPI, I2C, PWM, Analog Input/Output etc. ) • Avnet Silica (HoriZone RA kit powered by Renesas, Part no : AVSHORIZONE-RENRA-ETH, supports LTE-M cat-M1, NB-IoT cat.NB1 and EGPRS. • Fibocom (Part no : MA510-GL, Developed based on Qualcomm platform, supports various interfaces such as UART, USB2.0, I2C, I2S, SPI, ADC, GPIO etc. • SEQUANS (Part no : Monarch 2 GM02S-NEKTAR, comes with global SIM card) • Telit (EVK2 supports LTE-Cat NB1-Cat 6, 3G and 2G) |
| GSM, GPRS, 3G (UMTS/WCDMA) kits | • u-blox (C027 - Mbed enabled IoT Kit) , Supports 2G/3G • PHYTEC , Develops 2G/3G/4G/Nb-IoT and Zigbee embedded development kits • SORACOM, INC., develops 2G/3G IoT Connectivity Kit (powered by Arduino), Uses u-blox SARA-U201 radio module, SAMD21 32 bit ARM MCU, Supports various carrier frequencies viz. GSM 850, E-GSM 1900, DCS 1800, PCS 1900 |
| LoRa or LoRaWAN Kits | • Dragino Technology Co., LTD. www.dragino.com • www.seeedstudio.com, LoRa-E5 Development Kit which is based on LoRa-E5 STM32WLE5JC • Multi-Tech Systems, Inc. , IoT Starter Kit for LoRa • STMicroelectronics, STM32L0 Discovery kit for LoRa • AllThingsTalk, LoRaWAN rapid development kit |
| Sigfox kits | • SEONG JI INDUSTRIAL CO.,LTD (Previous:WiSOL Co.,LTD) • Texas Instruments • MikroElektronika d.o.o • NATIONAL SOCIETY OF CONNECTED OBJECTS (SNOC) • STMicroelectronics, STM32L0 Discovery kit for Sigfox |
| 5G IoT kits | Thales Group Website : https://www.thalesgroup.com/ |
