Smart cities and smart metering with NB-IoT

Smart cities and smart metering with NB-IoT

Smart-city and smart-metering deployments share a key characteristic: they operate in the field for 15 years or longer, often in places that are hard to reach and hard to power. Connectivity decisions made today stand the test of time through regulatory shifts, network evolution and operator changes that are inevitable over that horizon.

This guide brings together the essentials of NB-IoT, what it is, how it works, where it fits, and how it compares to other LPWAN options. It also links to deeper, application-specific resources built around the ultracompact ST87M01 NB-IoT module with optional GNSS and Wi-Fi positioning.

Why NB-IoT for smart cities and metering

Smart-city and metering use cases are defined by three constraints that NB-IoT is engineered around:

• Coverage in the wrong places: meters in basements, sensors in waste bins, lighting controllers on poles. NB-IoT's deep-indoor coverage advantage and low-data-rate robustness make it well suited to these hard-to-reach locations.
• Battery life spans years instead of weeks: field-replaceable batteries are a notable operational expense. NB-IoT's PSM and eDRX modes are designed for 10+ years of operation on a small primary cell.
• Predictable, regulated reliability: smart meters are billing instruments; smart-city sensors feed compliance reports. Operator-grade SLAs and licensed spectrum keep service quality measurable and enforceable.

Add the financial dimension: NB-IoT reuses existing public cellular infrastructure, which removes the capital cost of building a private LPWAN. For a utility deploying tens of thousands of meters, that decision shapes the overall business case.

Use cases at a glance

Designing for compliance, scalability and longevity

Three concerns dominate conversations with utilities, municipalities and metering OEMs scoping NB-IoT projects today. Each concern maps to a specific ST87M01 design choice:

Cybersecurity compliance under RED-DA

The Radio Equipment Directive Delegated Act, mandatory in the European Union starting in 2025, sets cybersecurity requirements for radio equipment placed on the market. Non-compliance blocks CE marking. The ST87M01 is RED and RED-DA certified at the module level, which removes a significant compliance burden from the device-level design.

Operator flexibility over a fifteen-year lifecycle

Operator footprints, tariffs and even ownership change over a meter's life. A SIM with SGP.32-compliant remote SIM provisioning lets you change the network operator over the air, without physical access to the device. The ST87M01 supports the SGP.32 standard by implementing the IPAd function and working with ST4SIM eSIM.

Longevity and supply-chain assurance

Metering and infrastructure programs commit to specifications years before the first device ships. The ST87M01 is backed by ST's 15-year longevity commitment and is fully designed and manufactured in Europe by ST, with 100% ownership of the SoC, RF frontend and module design, a meaningful difference for buyers required to manage geopolitical and supply-chain risk.

ST87M01 features that matter for utilities and cities

Energy Estimator (ST87-E²)

ST87-E² is an embedded function that monitors real network activity and produces realistic energy-consumption figures, which lets engineers size batteries and predict device lifetime without external measurement hardware. For deployments where battery sizing is a budget item across millions of nodes, this changes how the bill of materials is set.

Wireless M-Bus fallback

The ST87M01-1400 variant supports Wireless M-Bus PHY for legacy metering networks, while the ST87M01 platform continues to support NB-IoT for new deployments. One module, two connectivity strategies: useful for utilities migrating their installed base.

Embedded protocol stack

IPv4/IPv6, TCP/UDP, CoAP, LwM2M, MQTT, HTTP/HTTPS and DTLS all run on the module itself. For a smart-meter or sensor design, this often eliminates the need for an external application MCU dedicated to networking, reducing BOM cost and design complexity.

Take the next step

• Smart cities whitepaper: system architectures, power budgeting, total cost of ownership analysis.
• Webinar: From first data to fleet operations with lifecycle visibility with Wireless Logic, on managing large fleets of NB-IoT devices in the field.

• STEVAL-NBIOTV1 reference design: asset tracking, smart cities and metering reference design.
• ST87M01 product page: module datasheet, certifications, ordering.
• STDES-NBIOTLIGHT: reference design for a multiboard smart street lighting application based on ST87M01 and STPM32.

• NB-IoT vs LPWAN: choosing the right technology: side-by-side comparison with LoRaWAN, Sigfox and LTE-M.