Cellular communications

LTE—often referred to as 4G cellular—is a popular option for IoT connectivity. In a typical LTE network, User Equipment (UE) such as a smart phone (or an IoT device) contains a USIM that securely stores authentication information. The authentication information stored in the USIM enables authentication with the carrier's Authentication Center (AuC). A symmetric pre-shared key is provisioned to both the USIM (at manufacture time) and the AuC (at subscribe time), which then uses that symmetric key to derive an Access Security Management Entity (ASME). The ASME is used to derive additional keys that encrypt signalling and user communications.

Future 5G communications may offer additional deployment options for IoT systems, based on higher throughput and the ability to support many more connections. This may provide enhanced capabilities for direct connectivity of IoT devices to the cloud and allow for new centralized controller functions to be created that support multitudes of geographically dispersed sensors/actuators with limited infrastructure in place. More robust cellular capabilities will further enable the cloud to be the aggregation point for sensor data feeds, web service interactions, and interfaces to numerous enterprise applications.

There are many communication protocols used by IoT devices besides the ones discussed. The following is a description of some of those other protocols: