LTE-M Coverage Enhancement Mode A & B. The LTE-M specification has defined two Coverage Enhancement Modes: Mode A & Mode B. The main difference is that Coverage Enhancement Mode A supports only moderate coverage enhancements whereas Mode B supports very deep coverage.
Coverage Techniques The following section provides background information and technical insights into many of the techniques used to provide the coverage enhancement for the LTE-M specification. For every dB the TX power is increased, there is a 1 dB increase in MCL.
The key finding is that LTE-M can realistically support a coverage gain of 21 dB relative to legacy LTE devices, which exceeds the 18 dB 3GPP target. This 21 dB gain corresponds to a data rate of 1400 bps in downlink and 250 bps in uplink.
3GPP Rel 13 introduced several new features and functions within the new LTE-M technology, which defines Cat M1. Many of these enhanced features and functions are commonly referred to as Power Saving Mode (PSM), eDRX, Coverage Enhancement Mode A and B, etc. 3GPP Rel 14 and Rel 15 have introduced further new features with the LTE-M technology.
LTE-M provides low-cost LTE devices suitable for massive Machine-Type Communications (MTC) and the Internet of Things (IoT) with substantially enhanced coverage compared to normal LTE devices. 3GPP has only published LTE-M coverage targets and since coverage is a key pillar to all LPWA technologies, it is very important to understand how much coverage LTE-M can actually provide.
Coverage Analysis of LTE-M Category-M1 – LTE for IoT chipsets, Coverage Analysis of LTE-M Category-M1 – LTE for IoT chipsets, Coverage Analysis of LTE-M Category-M1 – LTE for IoT chipsets
