Evaluation of Cellular IoT for Sport Wearables

In this paper, we evaluate the suitability of LTE for Machine-Type Communications (LTE-M) and Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) for sport wearables. The evaluation is done in a live test network using commercial evaluation boards. The performance is measured in terms of throughput, latency, power consumption, NB-IoT cell reselection delay, and link distance. Based on the results, both NB-IoT and LTE-M are able to support periodic training data updates and message reception in normal conditions. The power consumption of the measured devices varies considerably, especially the measured LTE-M device consumes significantly more power than the power-optimized NB-IoT device. However, the current smart watch batteries should be able to support several hour training sessions if the non-modem power consumption is low. Coverage enhancements for NB-IoT can increase the link distance significantly with the cost of decreased throughput and increased delay, which prevents the use of fast training data upload at extended coverage regions.