# IoT's Tiny Steps towards 5G: Telco's Perspective
## 2 Research Approach and Design  
The main objectives of this paper can be summarized as follows: (1) to identify activities relevant to IoT customer service requests and use them as a new classification criterion of IoT applications; (2) to specify and prioritize performance requirements of such IoT application classes; (3) to analyze relevant literature in order to provide insight into 5G radio technologies used to fulfil the requirements of activity-based IoT application classes; (4) to recognize research gaps and directions. The research questions posed in this study are: (1) Which activities can be used as classification criteria for IoT applications? (2) What are the performance requirements of such IoT application classes? (3) Which enabling technologies in the radio access part of the 5G network can be used to meet the requirements of IoT application classes? Investigation of different criteria for the classification of IoT applications underlines to what extent various classification concepts have been covered by existing literature and provides a basis for the introduction of a new classification criterion called the activity. We thus surveyed and compared different studies contributing to the understanding of the scope and classification of a wide range of IoT applications. This approach has been motivated by the challenge to propose an activity-based classification of IoT applications, the determination and prioritization of performance requirements of such IoT application classes and the review of 5G enabling technologies used to meet them. These findings can be utilized by telecom operators and other interested parties (e.g., the research community, software network function providers, network infrastructure manufactures, etc.) depending on their interest and potential to utilize these findings towards 5G implementation and commercialization. The methodological approach to research conducted in this paper is illustrated in Figure 1 and includes four phases. **Phase I** included searching, identifying, and extracting papers from three categories, i.e., IoT in 5G service classification, IoT in 5G performance requirements and IoT in 5G enabling technologies. The keywords used to search relevant scholar databases are shown in Figure 2. This search has  
**Phase II** included the analysis and comparison of papers related to the category of IoT in 5G service classification. Papers were first sorted according to the existing classification criteria of IoT applications in order to underline their deficiencies from telco's perspective. Since emerging IoT applications generate traffic driven by less predictable activities, specifying their performance requirements and enabling technologies is not an easy task from telco's point of view. Therefore, we have proposed a common set of activities to serve as classification criteria of IoT applications. Four activities were selected based on IoT customer service requests denoting the function/purpose of existing IoT applications. According to the authors' knowledge, existing IoT applications can be grouped around following activities: ticketing, tracking, monitoring, and managing/controlling. Such a classification makes it easier for telecom operators to associate particular IoT applications to the relevant 5G service class. Finally, Phase II has resulted in the proposal of an activity-based classification of IoT applications which was associated with the 5G service classification. **Phase III** included the analysis of papers related to the category of IoT in 5G performance requirements. Papers were grouped according to eight key performance indicators, i.e., data rate, mobility, latency, connection density, reliability, positioning accuracy, coverage, and energy efficiency. These performance requirements were prioritized indicating high, medium, and low importance of each requirement for specific activity-based IoT application classes proposed in Phase II.