Low Power Connectivity

Energy-Efficient Communication

Get Your Free Whitepaper Series About Sensors in the IoT Now!

How Can the Life of Batteries in Mobile Networks be Improved?

The challenge for battery-powered sensors in the Internet of Things is to get by with the available energy for as long as possible. This can be achieved in many ways. The easiest way is to leave a device switched on only intermittently, spending the rest of the time in sleep mode. Since it is not accessible in sleep mode, developers have to find a good compromise between data actuality and sleep time.

In this white paper series, we highlight some aspects around the topic of energy saving. We explain how you can achieve the maximum runtime for your devices and where obstacles can be expected. An important factor for the energy consumption of an IoT device is the amount of data that is transmitted with each communication. The more data, the longer the device must remain active and the greater the power consumption. Therefore, we introduce two functions to save power. Also we look at the choice of the appropriate communication protocol, which can significantly contribute to extending the lifetime of battery-powered sensors.

What You Will Learn From This Whitepaper-Series

PART 1: Save Energy With the Right Hardware-Setup

In the first part of the white paper we look at the process of network search and registration. Where are the opportunities to save power and how can the IRAT timer provide support? Furthermore, we explain two functions for saving power - "Power Saving Mode" (PSM) and "Extended Discontinuous Reception" (eDRX) - and show their possibilities and limitations.

Part 2: MQTT, CoAP and LwM2M - the Lean Protocols for the IoT

Part 2 covers the three "lean" protocols mentioned above whose functions, unlike PSM and eDRX, do not depend on individual network operators. We explain MQTT, which is aimed at embedded devices in non-TCP/IP networks, CoAP, a connectionless, packet-oriented protocol that can connect to multiple servers, and LwM2M, which is based on CoAP and includes elements of device management.

PART 3: 1NCE Data Broker: More Battery Life Under NB-IoT and LTE-M

Choosing a suitable communication protocol with NB-IoT and LTE-M (Cat M1) mobile radio can significantly contribute in increasing the lifetime of battery-powered sensors. Optimally configured, these measures can achieve additional energy savings - more than if only network-based activity intervals are used via PSM or eDRX alone. We review this with a test setup in Part 3.