Evolution and Testing of NB-IoT Solutions

Abstract

NB-IoT is the first 3GPP technology that has been specifically developed for IoT. In this paper, we will introduce the most important NB-IoT features included in Release 14, Release 15, and Release 16 and the need for testing of NB-IoT solutions. This paper is focused on demonstrating the potential of the new experimentation features included into the TRIANGLE testbed to support testing and benchmarking of Narrowband Internet of Thing (NB-IoT) solutions. TRIANGLE provides an experimentation framework that offers a high level of abstraction using a framework that allows for defining and executing experiments in a very straightforward way. The experimentation framework developed as part of the TRIANGLE project optionally keeps experimenters far from the low level configuration of the infrastructure and provides scenarios which reproduce realistic conditions.

Trends in LPWAN Technologies for LEO Satellite Constellations in the NewSpace Context

“…NB-IoT is an LPWAN communication technology created to enhance the performance of the LTE standard [47]. Its main objective is to support low-cost, low-power devices while improving the coverage.…”

Design and Implementation of a Framework for Smart Home Automation Based on Cellular IoT, MQTT, and Serverless Functions

“…Compared to protocols such as LoRaWAN and Sigfox, NB-IoT works in LTE bands and does not require the use of a gateway. It provides extended coverage to delay-tolerant, low-cost, low-energy IoT applications, reaching good energy performance even in the worse-case, continuous transmission scenarios when compared to other communication protocols [17]. It represents a valuable choice for application fields that require massive deployments, good coverage and low data rates, including smart metering [33], smart grids [34], smart cities [35], healthcare [36][37][38], and industrial applications [39].…”

“…NB-IoT is a low-power wide area network (LPWAN) protocol by the Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), designed to provide wide connectivity to a huge number of IoT devices in massive deployment scenarios and in scenarios that require good radio coverage and lower power consumption, such as smart metering [14,15]. NB-IoT devices can reach nominal life times of around 10 years with small and infrequent messaging [16], with an overall good power consumption performance compared to other communication technologies, both cellular and not [17]. Cellular technologies such as NB-IoT can be employed to embed additional services that require internet connectivity in home and kitchen appliances, adding negligible power consumption to their normal mode of operation and advancing the machines as a service (MaaS) model [18,19] and servitization of the products [20].…”

User Clustering and Power Allocation for Energy Efficiency Maximization in Downlink Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Systems

“…To support simultaneous transmission in NOMA systems, much more transmission and circuit power consumption are inevitable. For many potential applications of NOMA (e.g., the well-known Internet-of-Things networks [28][29][30][31]), the lifetime of networks is critical in practice due to the high price of battery replacement. As a result, the energy-efficient transmission is one of the most important research directions in these areas [32][33][34].…”