What is mMTC?

mMTC or massive Machine Type Communication is one of the three services, defined by 3GPP, for 5G NR deployment in environments which have very high density of connected devices. mMTC focuses on applications that require a huge number of low-powered (IoT) devices operating over long-range with little to no human intervention. These autonomously communicating machine-to-machine (M2M) devices require low bandwidths and a long life.

Smart factories, smart cities, intelligent agriculture systems and other Industrial IoT establishments are excellent scenarios where mMTC can be implemented. mMTC can be built on the existing cellular IoT ecosystem and provides massive IoT connectivity in the licensed frequency spectrum. These applications can have millions of M2M devices, and existing cellular and Wi-Fi technologies become inadequate in handling these many nodes. On the other hand, using wired connectivity is virtually impossible given the sheer number of nodes in IIoT or Industry 4.0.

The three use cases defined by 3GPP for 5G networks are:

Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB): It is a direct evolution of the 4G LTE networks and aims to provide higher bandwidth and better latency for newer applications such as 4K media, AR, VR, etc.

Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC): This solution has been developed for critical applications that require the lowest possible latency and high network reliability. Smart/autonomous vehicles and emergency services are ideal examples where URLLC will be critical. Click here to more about the need for low-latency in 5G.

Massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC): mMTC is designed to be implemented in environments that require a large number of devices to be connected to each other. Industrial IoT setups, such as smart factories, are ideal scenarios where mMTC will provide high productivity and efficiency as these factories have thousands of devices that need to communicate with each other.