Introduction to Cellular LTE CatM / NBIoT

Revision as of 14:30, 26 March 2020 by Registered User
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1. What is Cellular LTE CatM and NBIoT

Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT or LTE Cat NB1) is a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) radio technology standard developed to enable a wide range of devices and services to be connected using cellular telecommunication bands. It is one of a range of Mobile IoT (MIoT) connectivity technologies standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) which also includes enhanced Machine-Type Communication (eMTC or LTE Cat M1) and EC-GSM-IoT particularly designed to fit Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.

2. Getting started with STM32 and Cellular LTE CatM and NBIoT

Hardware point of view, STMicroelectronics offers various possibilities to setup a STM32 with Cellular connectivity solution:

  • P-L496G-CELL01: Kit with a screenless 32L496GDISCOVERY Discovery board and a STMod+ board with the UG96 modem
  • P-L496G-CELL02: Kit with a screenless 32L496GDISCOVERY Discovery board and a STMod+ board with the BG96 modem
  • B-L475E-IOT01A IoT Discovery board and add-on board with Quectel BG96 modem
  • B-L475E-IOT01A IoT Discovery board and add-on board with Sequans® GM01Q modem
  • 32L496GDISCOVERY Discovery board and modem board based on Sequans® GM01Q or Quectel UG96 or BG96 modem

Note that to connect STMod+ board to B-L475E-IOT01A IoT Discovery board an Arduino / STMod+ adapter (X-NUCLEO-STMODA1) is needed because this board does not have STMod+ connector

Sotfware side, the X-CUBE-CELLULAR (X-CUBE expansion package) provides a SW solution to allow customers to quickly and easily develop their own Firmware.

  • Based on FreeRTOS
  • Users can decide to use either IP stack in the modem or in STM32 (LwIP)
  • Menu and command line through Virtual COM UART over USB ST-LINK to configure the cellular connectivity parameters (technology selection, bands, APN, and others), and connection to the cloud IoT platform (HTTP or MQTT)

Several applications are provided as examples:

  • PING application to test the access to a remote machine
  • ECHO application to provide an example of connection and data exchanges using the TCP or UDP (connected or not-connected mode) socket protocols
  • HTTP application to exchange data between the device and the cloud using HTTP protocol
  • MQTT application to exchange data between the device and the cloud. On the cloud side, a dashboard is the interface with the end user
  • COM application to test the access to other services than sockets provided by the COM library (such as read information from ICC)
  • CUSTOM application, an empty application already pre-integrated in X-CUBE-CELLULAR. It is provided to ease customers development.

New HW setups and new features in X-CUBE-CELLULAR will be provided to customers according to the

3. Video related to Cellular LTE CatM and NBIoT

Getting started with Cellular CELL01 & CELL02 kits:

pc videol.png

How to get started with STM32 Cellular to Cloud discovery packs (P-L496G-CELL01, P-L496G-CELL02)

4. STM32 compliant with Cellular LTE CatM and NBIoT

The place to put a table with all STM32 compliant with the feature

5. Specific tools

Links and explanations for the tech domain dedicated tools

6. STMicroelectronics Resources

Doc Number Title
DB3582 Cellular connectivity software expansion for STM32Cube
UM2567 Getting started with the X-CUBE-CELLULAR cellular connectivity Expansion Package for STM32Cube
UL2426 X-CUBE-CELLULAR cellular connectivity Expansion Package for STM32Cube


7. Examples

The area where FAE's, collab... can put examples (linked to Github)