u-blox has announced the certification of its smallest Cat M1 module for Verizon’s nationwide Category M1 (Cat M1) LTE network. The SARA‑R404M module has been designed for easy integration and manufacturing. It measures just 16 x 26 mm and is ideal for industrial Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
LTE Cat M1 is part of the 3GPP Release 13 standard supporting low power wide area technologies in the licensed spectrum and specifically supports IoT applications with low to medium data throughput rates. It can support applications requiring longer battery lifetimes, low latency and mobility. The market potential for the new technology is expected to be extensive and will cover applications in many areas, such as the smart home, security systems, industrial monitoring and control, asset tracking, telematics, connected health, smart metering, and smart cities.
The SARA‑R404M LTE Cat M1 module consumes significantly less power than comparable 3G or 4G technologies and can be optimized to have a battery life of up to 10 years for some use cases. It offers an extended temperature range of -40 to +85°C, reducing maintenance expenses and the total cost of device ownership. It also supports extended coverage in buildings and basements with a 15 dB coverage enhancement as compared to GSM. Further, critical firmware updates can be delivered via the u-blox uFOTA (Firmware-Over-The-Air) client server solution, which supports LWM2M - a light and compact protocol that is ideal for IoT applications.
u-blox has ensured easy design migration from their 2G, 3G and 4G modules to the the SARA‑R404M module to enable future-proof, seamless mechanical scalability across technologies.
