With the popularity of the smart home industry in recent years, the frequency of smart locks in life is getting higher and higher. At present, smart locks use non-mechanical keys as user identification ID technologies. The mainstream technologies include proximity cards, fingerprint recognition, passwords Recognition, facial recognition, etc., greatly improve the security of access control, but the premise of the above security is that in the power-on state, if the smart lock is in a power-off state, it is useless.
This limits the practicality of the user, and in the above technology if someone maliciously cuts off the power supply of your home, then your smart device is not as good as a fool's old-fashioned device, even if you have a backup battery, how long can it last?
In order to improve security, a built-in battery is required to collect various basic data and transmit the data to the server. When the server collects abnormal data, it will send an alarm to the user. Since the smart lock is not easy to disassemble after installation, its battery life is required. To be long, installing the battery in the lock can effectively avoid the embarrassment of the above-mentioned power failure. It is estimated that some people here will say, "Didn't the previous say that the battery will not last long?" Don't worry, there will be an introduction later.
Smart locks are not only used in smart homes, for example, there are shared bicycles that we are familiar with. Why is NB-IoT being used on a large scale now, there is nothing wrong with it, "base station". Let's look back at the house structure in China. The door is generally in the aisle. This kind of place is mostly a closed environment, and the signal is very poor. If GPRS is used, there may be no signal at all in some places. It is relatively weak, causing data delay or even loss, but the problem of NB-IoT can be minimized. The following introduces the advantages of NB-IoT in actual use.
1. Five advantages of NB-IOT
Advantage 1: Massive connections
Compared with 2G/3G/4G, NB-IoT has a 50~100 times increase in uplink capacity, which means that in the case of the same base station, NB-IoT can provide 50~100 times more access than existing wireless technologies. . To give a simple example, a cell network is covered by a base station, and the original wireless network can only support 5 terminals in each family. It may be occupied by 4 mobile phones and 1 tablet. Smart home appliances, as well as the multitude of sensory devices that need to be connected to the Internet, are difficult to access. NB-IoT provides at least 50 times the number of accesses, that is, 250 terminal accesses, which is enough to meet the networking needs of a large number of devices in smart homes in the future.
Advantage two: deep coverage
Compared with LTE, NB-IoT has a 20dB gain, which is equivalent to a 100-fold increase in transmit power, that is, a 100-fold increase in coverage capability, even in places where signals are difficult to reach, such as underground garages, basements, and underground pipes. Taking advantage of this, Vodafone's NB-IoT Experimental Bureau is working on a project for underground garage indication. The network construction of the navigation and positioning system in the traditional underground garage requires the support of local wireless technologies such as WiFi and Bluetooth. This navigation indicating network is also limited to the use of this parking lot. If you use a deep coverage NB-IoT network, you only need to attach a positioning module, and you can build cross-regional parking instructions and navigation.
Advantage 3: Ultra-low power consumption
Low power consumption is an important indicator for IoT applications, especially for some devices and occasions where batteries cannot be replaced frequently, such as various sensing and monitoring devices placed in remote areas of alpine wilderness, they cannot be charged like smartphones once a day. , a battery life of up to several years is the most essential requirement. Under the premise that the battery technology cannot make a breakthrough, the battery power supply time can only be extended by reducing the power consumption of the device.
The energy consumed by a communication device is often related to the amount or rate of data, that is, the size of the data packet sent out per unit time determines the size of the power consumption. With a small amount of data, the device's modem and amplifier can be tuned to a very small level. NB-IoT focuses on small data volume and low rate applications, so the power consumption of NB-IoT devices can be very small. In addition, in order to further reduce power consumption and prolong battery life, NB-IoT introduces ultra-long DRX (discontinuous reception) power saving technology and PSM power saving mode. NB-IoT can keep devices online all the time, but saves power by reducing unnecessary signaling and not accepting paging messages when in PSM state. This can guarantee the battery life of more than 5 years.
Advantage four: Low cost
Low speed, low power consumption and low bandwidth bring the advantage of low cost. Low speed does not require large cache, so it can have small cache and low DSP configuration; low power consumption means that RF design requirements are low, and small PA can be implemented; because of low bandwidth, complex equalization algorithms are not needed... These factors make NB - IoT chips can be made very small. The chip cost is often related to the chip size. The smaller the size, the lower the cost, and the cost of the module is also lower.
It is reported that the NB-IoT chip launched by HiSilicon integrates BB and AP, Flash and battery management in the size of a coin, and reserves the function of sensor integration. The AP contains three ARM-M0 cores, and each M0 core is responsible for application, security, and communication functions, which reduces cost and power consumption while facilitating function management. Subsequent chips will also integrate Soft SIM to further reduce cost.
Advantage five: Stable and reliable
NB-IoT is directly deployed in GSM network, UMTS network or LTE network, and can be multiplexed with existing network base stations to reduce deployment cost and achieve smooth upgrade, but it uses a separate 180KHz frequency band and does not occupy the voice and data bandwidth of the existing network , to ensure that traditional business and future IoT business can be carried out stably and reliably at the same time. Taking the application of smart meter reading as an example, compared with the 60% success rate of data recovery using wired PLC meter reading, NB-IoT can ensure that the data recovery rate is 99%, and the reliability is greatly improved.
From a solution/chip perspective. For Huawei, NB-IoT is a big strategy of the company, and all departments are actively involved in it. As the leader, Huawei provides end-to-end solutions, including base stations, core networks, chips, operating systems, and data management platforms. In addition to HiSilicon, Ericsson and Qualcomm are actively developing and producing such chips, and many chip manufacturers and module manufacturers also plan to support NB-IoT this year.
From the operator's response to and investment in NB-IoT. The NB-IoT standard has been responded to by many mainstream operators. China Mobile, China Unicom (600050, shares), Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Telecom Italia, AT&T and other top global operators have all released their own NB-IoT. Develop strategies and carry out experiments.
The advantages of NB are listed above, and you can see where its advantages are. For these five advantages, what you can do with it is very clear, and the problems mentioned above are easily solved.
2. Practical application of NB-IoT in smart locks
According to the above advantages, we can see that its use of NB-IoT in the field of smart locks will be a mainstream. We can use it in smart home systems to control door locks. At the same time, the well-known OfO small yellow car is also working together Huawei is the first to use this technology
2.1. Application in smart home
In the current application of new technologies for smart door locks, Haier is at the forefront of the industry. In June 2017, Haier released smart door locks and cloud locks based on NB-IoT technology. Cloud Lock can provide users with a stable "always online" smart experience. It can not only solve the situation that the network cannot be connected due to the high power consumption and small coverage of the WiFi network, but also simplifies many steps such as tedious APP download in the traditional WiFi control mode, making the smart door lock more stable and stable through the operator network. It is convenient to realize the configuration connection. At the same time, with the Haier smart door lock and cloud lock equipped with NB-IoT technology as the entry point, users can also drive other smart products to connect to the NB-IoT network through the smart door lock to connect home security, entertainment, All smart life scene network devices, including life, build a series of IoT home scenes, and realize remote control, security alarm, and running status monitoring of smart home products.
3. Application in the sharing economy
It is well known that OfO is the first to use NB in the sharing economy, and has achieved very good results. The introduction of NB-IoT technology by ofo is the first application of this technology in the shared bicycle industry. For ofo small yellow car, the IoT smart lock is of great significance. First, the stable and high-efficiency NB-IoT network unlocks faster and responds faster, realizing vehicle "second solution" and "random password" through data transmission. In addition, based on the 800MhzNB-IoT network operated by China Telecom, even if ofo bicycles are parked in underground garages, basements, underground pipes and other scenarios where the signal is difficult to cover, users can easily unlock them, which undoubtedly brings more benefits to ofo users. more space. The latest NB-IoT terminal products can meet the application requirements of OfO shared bicycle smart locks, and it is convenient for the government to intelligently dispatch bicycles according to actual needs, thereby improving urban travel efficiency and allowing shared bicycles to better serve users.
4. Practical application in individual
In practical applications, I have used the E840-DTU (the digital radio of NB-IoT) of "Chengdu Ebyte Electronics Co., Ltd." to make smart scan code door locks. E840-DTU is launched by Ebyte. NB-IoT radio product, the product software has complete functions and covers most of the conventional application scenarios. Users can realize bidirectional data from the serial port to the network server through simple settings.