LTE-M or LTE-MTC (" Long-Term Evolution Machine Type Communication"), is a type of

low-power wide-area network A low-power wide-area network (LPWAN or LPWA network) is a type of wireless telecommunication wide area network designed to allow long-range communications at a low bit rate among things (connected objects), such as sensors operated on a batter ...

radio communication technology standard developed by 3GPP for

machine-to-machine Machine to machine (M2M) is direct communication between devices using any communications channel, including wired and wireless. Machine to machine communication can include industrial instrumentation, enabling a sensor or meter to communicate th ...

and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. LTE-M includes eMTC ("enhanced Machine Type Communication"), also known as LTE Cat-M1, whose specification was frozen in 3GPP Release 13 (

LTE Advanced Pro LTE Advanced (LTE+) is a mobile communication standard and a major enhancement of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard. It was formally submitted as a candidate 4G to ITU-T in late 2009 as meeting the requirements of the IMT-Advanced standa ...

), in June 2016. Competing 3GPP IoT technologies include NB-IoT and EC-GSM-IoT. The advantage of LTE-M over NB-IoT is its comparatively higher data rate, mobility, and voice over the network, but it requires more bandwidth, is more costly, and cannot be put into

guard band In radio, a guard band is an unused part of the radio spectrum between radio bands, for the purpose of preventing interference. It is a narrow frequency range used to separate two wider frequency ranges to ensure that both can transmit simultane ...

portion of the

frequency band A frequency band is an interval in the frequency domain, delimited by a lower frequency and an upper frequency. The term may refer to a radio band or an interval of some other spectrum. The frequency range of a system is the range over which i ...

for now. Compared to LTE Release 12 Cat-0 modem, an LTE-M model is claimed to be 80% less expensive (in terms of the bill of materials), support up to 18 dB better coverage, and a battery lifetime that can last up to several years. In March 2019, the

Global Mobile Suppliers Association The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) is a not-for-profit industry organisation representing companies in the mobile communication industry. GSA actively promotes 3GPP technology such as 3G; 4G; 5G. GSA is a market representation partn ...

reported that over 100 operators had deployed/launched either NB-IoT or LTE-M networks.

3GPP Narrowband Cellular Standards

Deployments

As of March 2019 the

had identified: * 60 operators in 35 countries investing in LTE-M networks * 34 of those operators in 24 countries had deployed/launched their networks

References

External links

Standards for the IoT
{{network-stub Internet of things LTE (telecommunication) Mobile technology

3GPP Narrowband Cellular Standards

Deployments

See also

References

External links