Outdoor and in-transit tracking over LTE-M, NB-IoT or LTE Cat-1 with GNSS positioning. Battery life ranges from weeks to years, and the variable that decides which is reporting policy rather than anything about the hardware.
A cellular tracker gets its position from GNSS and reports it over an operator network, which means it works anywhere there is coverage without any site infrastructure at all. That is its advantage over every indoor technology and the reason it dominates in-transit tracking.
Its constraint is energy. A GNSS fix costs energy, a network attach costs more, and doing both on a schedule chosen for the worst case will exhaust a battery long before the asset needs replacing.
So reporting policy is the design. Report more often while moving, less often while stationary. Report immediately on an alarm regardless of schedule. Buffer when coverage fails rather than retrying until the battery is gone. Devices designed this way last years where fixed-interval devices last weeks.
| Parameter | Detail |
|---|---|
| Links | LTE-M, NB-IoT or LTE Cat-1 |
| Positioning | GNSS, multi-constellation |
| Accuracy | Metres, outdoors |
| Battery life | Weeks to years, dominated by reporting policy rather than chemistry |
| Infrastructure | Operator coverage only; no site infrastructure |
| Buffering | Store and forward when coverage is unavailable |
| Typical markets | Logistics, plant hire, agriculture, utilities |
Maturity — silicon-proven, FPGA-validated or RTL stage — is confirmed at enquiry for the specific configuration you need, rather than claimed generically here.
Send the target node, the interface requirements and the integration context. If this is not the right fit, that will be said early rather than discovered at integration.
Weeks to years, and reporting policy dominates over cell chemistry. A device reporting every fifteen minutes and one reporting hourly differ by roughly a factor of four in radio energy, which is most of the energy budget.
LTE-M supports higher data rates and mobility with handover, making it better for assets in motion. NB-IoT reaches deeper into buildings and uses less power for small infrequent messages, suiting static or slow-moving assets.
Data is buffered with original timestamps and forwarded when coverage returns. Where continuity matters more than eventual delivery, the NTN variant escalates to a satellite link.
Tell us the specification, the constraint and the deadline. Programmes that cross silicon, radio, embedded and AI are where Faststream is strongest.