Introduction to Cellular LTE CatM / NBIoT

Revision as of 18:34, 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 Quectel UG96 modem
  • P-L496G-CELL02: Kit with a screenless 32L496GDISCOVERY Discovery board and a STMod+ board with the Quectel 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+ an adapter (X-NUCLEO-STMODA1) is needed because this Discovery 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)
  • Easy to support a new modem

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

X-CUBE-CELLULAR on st.com
P-L496G-CELL02 on st.com
B-L475E-IOT01A on st.com
32L496GDISCOVERY on st.com
X-NUCLEO-STMODA1 on st.com
[www.sequans.com/gm01q-stmod GM01Q on sequans.com]

5. Specific tools

STMicroelectronics’ STM32 Power Shield
Network simulator


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)