**7.3. Low device and deployment cost**

The opportunity cost of supporting IoT devices in cellular networks is very high, because as reported in [59], "IoT devices that pay less than a dollar per month will never get network access priority over cell phones with \$100 voice and data plans" [59]. IoT connectivity can be implemented and deployed over existing cellular networks using software upgrade in order to avoid additional costs of acquiring any new hardware [60]. The IoT networks are designed to be robust to interference, because they basically use the unlicensed bands or unused "guard bands" between the channels of licensed cellular spectrum, which are cheap compared to the licensed bands [59].

#### **7.4. Extended coverage**

**7. IoT networks versus mobile cellular networks**

152 Smartphones from an Applied Research Perspective

and IoT networks concerning these perspectives is given below.

**7.1. Long battery life**

power consumption [59].

**7.3. Low device and deployment cost**

[60].

[61].

licensed bands [59].

Regular cell phone networks fall short for IoT requirements, basically for battery life, cost, and wireless coverage. That is why many wireless carriers around the world are building new cellular networks to work with current and upcoming IoT devices and solving one or all of the three new IoT requirements [59]. For example, Orange and SoftBank are building nationwide IoT networks, Vodafone is upgrading its networks, and Cisco and Samsung are inventing and selling new devices to expand the IoT concept [59]. A comparison between cellular networks

Mobile cellular networks were designed to coordinate moving from one cell to another, called "hand-off" mechanism, without interrupting a phone call by using sophisticated algorithms [59]. To ensure this, mobile cell phones should communicate multiple times per second with the cell tower, which is very expensive in terms of battery consumption. In order to save the battery power for years, the IoT new cell networks' devices should spend most of their time in sleep mode using low power radio chips and optimized to minimize the power cost of data transmission and reception, for example, to read sensors' data or activate a control such as an alarm system [59]. Achieving years of battery is important for IoT devices, because it eliminates installation costs and that is why new networks need to be built to save the battery

**7.2. Support for a massive number of devices, network scalability, and diversity**

The IoT network should handle the increasing number of simultaneous connected devices, which may not be uniform and therefore could not be handled by the cellular network, because some cells may have a very high number of connected devices compared to others

IoT networks need to scale efficiently to handle thousands or millions of connected devices, and should support diverse applications' requirements from simple sensors to tracking services to more advanced smart applications requiring higher throughput and lower latency

The opportunity cost of supporting IoT devices in cellular networks is very high, because as reported in [59], "IoT devices that pay less than a dollar per month will never get network access priority over cell phones with \$100 voice and data plans" [59]. IoT connectivity can be implemented and deployed over existing cellular networks using software upgrade in order to avoid additional costs of acquiring any new hardware [60]. The IoT networks are designed to be robust to interference, because they basically use the unlicensed bands or unused "guard bands" between the channels of licensed cellular spectrum, which are cheap compared to the IoT networks should also handle coverage concerns that are not covered by cellular networks in places such as basements of buildings, underground parking lots, and rural fields [60]. This extended coverage is required by many IoT applications to get the necessary data from the deployed sensors and send them in real time to the interested applications [60]. The IoT networks handle this by maximizing deep indoor penetration rather than bandwidth, and through the use of self-deployable gateways that could be installed like Wi-Fi routers [59].
