Thought to be one of first of its kind in the industry the firms will evaluate whether LPWA technologies can support real-world industrial applications.

EDF R&D will use Nokia’s Device Testing Lab in France to test chipsets, modules and user devices across all wireless technologies and frequencies.

The testing will compare IoT technologies recently standardised by the 3G Partnership Project (3GPP) – including NarrowBand-IoT (NB-IoT) and LTE-Machine (LTE-M) (also known as enhanced Machine-Type Communications or eMTC) – with other emerging, largely unlicensed IoT technologies.

Stéphane Tanguy, head of IT Systems, EDF R&D, writes:

“The internet of things offers tremendous opportunities for our group. As the R&D engine of the EDF Group, it is our responsibility to characterize the objects, their connectivity, their integration into IoT platforms and the related end-to end cybersecurity properties.

“The cellular IOT technologies (LTE-M and NB-IOT) are two major technologies that we have decided to test with Nokia, which provides us with a very interesting test environment and valuable expertise to carry out these evaluations.”

According to Matthieu Bourguignon, head of Global Enterprise and Public Sector, Europe, for Nokia,  the use of IoT devices in industrial networks is in its infancy.

“But given the expected huge numbers of devices that will be deployed in the future, it is critical that our customers can evaluate now the various technologies before making substantial investments,” said Bourguignon.

The aim of the tests is to evaluate the performance of LPWA against other emerging technologies and reduce the risk of future deployments.