Analytical Modeling and Experimental Validation of NB-IoT Device Energy Consumption

It is expected that internet of things (IoT) will deal with the major activities in the connected living environment as well as the industrial processes. All these aspects are going to be real in the frameworks of the fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks. 5G-based narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) networks have the capability to serve various innovative IoT applications at a great extent. NB-IoT is third generation partnership project (3GPP) standardized low power wide area (LPWA) technology which is designed for IoT devices requiring long battery life, low cost, worldwide coverage, and high system capacity. To improve the performance, 3GPP has agreed that the NB-IoT will continue evolving as part of the 5G specifications. NB-IoT along with 5G will work in several connected living applications. This combination will also be very useful in the industrial environments which need high data rates and low latency. All these features will be supported by 5G in the future. Similarly, applications with low data rates in the IoT world will be supported by NB-IoT. So 5G and NB-IoT are going to be a popular combination for several new applications.

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is the prominent technology that fits the requirements of future IoT networks. However, due to the limited spectrum (i.e., 180 kHz) availability for NB-IoT systems, one of the key issues is how to efficiently use these resources to support massive IoT devices? Furthermore, in NB-IoT, to reduce the computation complexity and to provide coverage extension, the concept of time offset and repetition has been introduced. Considering these new features, the existing resource management schemes are no longer applicable. Moreover, the allocation of frequency band for NB-IoT within LTE band, or as a standalone, might not be synchronous in all the cells, resulting in intercell interference (ICI) from the neighboring cells’ LTE users or NB-IoT users (synchronous case). In this paper, first a theoretical framework for the upper bound on the achievable data rate is formulated in the presence of control channel and repetition factor. From the conducted analysis, it is shown that the maximum achievable data rates are 89.2 Kbps and 92 Kbps for downlink and uplink, respectively. Second, we propose an interference aware resource allocation for NB-IoT by formulating the rate maximization problem considering the overhead of control channels, time offset, and repetition factor. Due to the complexity of finding the globally optimum solution of the formulated problem, a sub-optimal solution with an iterative algorithm based on cooperative approaches is proposed. The proposed algorithm is then evaluated to investigate the impact of repetition factor, time offset and ICI on the NB-IoT data rate, and energy consumption. Furthermore, a detailed comparison between the non-cooperative, cooperative, and optimal scheme (i.e., no repetition) is also presented. It is shown through the simulation results that the cooperative scheme provides up to 8% rate improvement and 17% energy reduction as compared with the non-cooperative scheme.

Narrow-Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is 3GPPs cellular technology designed for Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWN) and it is a promising approach that NB-IoT combines with NOMA which is designed for accommodating more devices in the 5G era. Previous works mainly focus on uplink channel resource allocation to achieve connectivity maximization in NB-IoT with NOMA; however, few articles consider NB-IoT downside issues and downlink resource allocation problem to achieve maximum system throughput has not been studied in NB-IoT with NOMA. Thus, in this paper to provide a reliable and seamless service for NB-IoT users (NUs) and maximizing network downlink throughput, we propose a resource allocation algorithm for joint equipment QoS requirements and resource allocation fairness. In this scheme, we design algorithm to implement the mapping between NUs and subchannels for suboptimal system throughput. Then we convert the power allocation problem of the NUs on the same subchannel into a DC problem and we design algorithm to solve it to get suboptimal solution. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme achieves a better performance compared with exiting schemes in terms of the system throughput.

Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) has been released by 3GPP to provide extended coverage and low energy consumption for low-cost machine-type devices. Requiring only a reasonably low-cost hardware update to the already deployed Long Term Evolution (LTE) base stations and being compatible with current core network and enhanced core solutions that aim to reduce the battery consumption and minimize the signalling, NB-IoT deployments are quickly increasing, making NB-IoT a dominating technology for low-power wide area (LPWA) networks. To this aim, in this paper we focus on group communications (i.e., multicast) in NB-IoT to efficiently support the transmission of firmware, software, task updates or commands towards a large set of devices. We discuss the architectural and procedural enhancements needed to support the unique features of group communications in machine-type environments, such as customer-driven group formation. We also extend the NB-IoT frame to include a channel for multicast transmissions. Finally, we propose two transmission strategies for multicast content delivery and evaluate their performance considering the impact on the downlink background traffic and the channel occupancy.

This chapter covers the evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) from different aspects. It focuses on 3GPP cellular IoT evolution for connectivity, that is, narrowband IoT (NB‐IoT). The chapter summarizes the IoT evolution from an end‐to‐end perspective, including the IoT platform, IoT protocols, connectivity, and the sensors layer. The IoT platform should support open standard protocols to communicate with different sensors, devices, and gateways from different vendors. The proposed IoT platform will support existing technologies including 2G/3G/LTE/Wi‐Fi/PLC/ Fixed and low‐power, wide‐area (LPWA) networks such as long‐range (LoRaWAN) and Sigfox as well as 3GPP standardized technologies such as LTE‐Machine‐Type Communications (MTC) and 3GPP NB‐IoT. The chapter shows link budgets for NB‐IoT with different subcarrier spacing. One machine‐to‐machine (M2M) is a global partnership developing standards for M2M communications, enabling large‐scale implementation of the IoT. The chapter addresses a high‐level architecture reference model, network elements, and reference point for cellular IoT (CIoT).

Characterizing optimal LPWAN access delay in massive multi-RAT smart grid deployments

This chapter illustrates that there are many challenging problems in the modern society such as environment pollution, radiation pollution, high demand, and low supply of energy. Such issues need modern solutions to tackle them. In this context, green internet of things (IoT) solutions have come up with flying colors. As there is a constant need of the energy by the interconnected IoT devices to perceive, fetch, and transmit the real-time information, the energy demands remain high. Green IoT is an emerging concept to meet this problem by framing the energy-efficient policies so as to provide a simpler yet better solution to enhance the quality of the current practices. In this chapter, different practical aspects of green IoT and narrowband IoT (NBIoT) deployment have been presented. NBIoT narrowband signals are used in low data rates are transmitted and have a widerange of reception because narrow filters cancel out unwanted wideband noise. NBIoT has several advantages over LTE-M due to lower device cost, longer battery life and extended coverage. Finally, some future research directions have been addressed.

The application of Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) technology in wireless monitoring of power terminal equipment is studied in this paper. From the aspects of hardware and software design of monitoring terminal, communication protocol, remote data management cloud platform, the wireless monitoring system of power terminal based on Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is designed in detail. STM32L151 is chosen as the main controller of the monitoring terminal owing to its low power consumption. After simple edge calculation and data packaging, the terminal equipment status information is reported to the remote data management platform via NB-IoT network based on system setting. The platform supports various functions such as a variety of terminal access methods, terminal identity authentication, parameter configuration, data forwarding, and terminal abnormal data information reporting and so on. In order to improve the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) transmission reliability, the terminal drop detection mechanism is designed on UDP communication protocol. Eventually, the system is applied in monitoring power terminal equipment status such as transmission and distribution pole tower, power well cover, cable trench cover, knife brake of distribution line, etc. The experimental results show that the power terminal monitoring system based on NB-IoT can achieve unified access and centralized management of power equipment status information in different power scenarios, and this system greatly enhances the reliability and efficiency of power system terminal equipment operation and maintenance, and has value in engineering.

Internet of things (IoT) is a way of connecting everything around us together, which would be widely applied in the 5G era. Narrow band IoT (NB-IoT) is one of the solutions introduced from 3rd Generation Partner Project (3GPP) Release-13 to fulfill this concept. Massive-connection and narrow band operation are two key features of NB-IoT. With current NB-IoT design, certain resources within narrow band are dedicated for transmitting paging information of massive connections. This leads to overload of the dedicated resources, and consequently increased padding bits and low resource efficiency. Moreover, UE power consumption would also rise due to the extra effort to decode larger packets. To solve above problems, a new resource allocation method is proposed, which includes a new definition of paging resource set and corresponding resource selection method. Link level simulation is conducted to show the benefit of our proposals. It is observed that approximately power consumption could be saved by 80% and the resource efficiency could be improved by 30.5% by utilizing our proposed methods.

3G and 4G wireless communication technology, which requires broad network resources and large amounts of available electricity, was designed for high-speed Internet usage. Most narrowband-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) devices do not require high-speed Internet because most IoTs work by sending commands to and receiving commands from a server only. NB-IoT is a low-power wide area (LPWA) technology that was developed to accommodate a broad variety of new IoT devices. A low-power wide area network (LPWAN) uses narrow frequencies that support the use of devices in the 900 MHz frequency range that are inexpensive and that can be used in both buildings and wide areas. NB-IoT devices can also be used to assist medical patients, the elderly, and disabled people that are susceptible to falling. Our newly developed monitoring system has the ability to immediately recognize a fall, and then automatically alert up to 4 contacts via the LINE application. If dispatch of a medical unit is required, the patient's location is automatically available without the need for voice contact by the patient.

Internet of things (IoT) has become a pervasive technology with ubiquitous presence in the modern digital ecosystem. Several types of IoT are available in the recent years based on their features and applications. Narrowband IoT (NBIoT) is one of the 3GPP standardized solutions for massive machine type communications (mMTC). It is designed for the large scale mMTC to provide coverage over a large area. Therefore, NBIoT is one of the most attractive low power wide area (LPWA) technologies. It is preferred for the large scale deployments in the large projects such as smart farming, healthcare, smart cities and smart grids. However, it is also suitable for low power domestic applications such as smart home and pets’ tracking. The LPWA features of NBIoT make it the primary choice for several emerging applications such as healthcare, agriculture, utility management, tracking of objects, smart city monitoring, retail management, smart grid monitoring, and industry applications. In this article we provide the principles and applications of NBIoT for the large scale deployments.

The arrival of internet of things (IoT) is a new revolution in the information and communication technologies. It added several new dimensions to the new and existing platforms of ICTs. It has improved the quality of our modern living by several new and smart technologies and their value-added applications. Applying the new emerging technologies in emergency medical services could offer better services to human lives during the emergency conditions. This chapter provides an overview of utilizing the IoT in the field of emergency medicine. IoT has tremendous potential to transform how the healthcare providers interact with patients. In order to achieve this, the healthcare sectors need widespread adoption and implementation of IoT. Healthcare sector is huge when compared with other IoT-enabled sectors. Therefore, the widespread deployment of IoT needs an effective version of IoT which is economical and does not pose any risk to the patients. Both these criteria can be met by the lighter and simpler version of IoT known as narrowband IoT (NBIoT). It is suitable due to its low power wide area (LPWA) coverage capabilities. In this chapter, the authors review the network architectures, applications, and trends of NBIoT in the modern healthcare. They further discuss how different wearable devices with coordinated smart sensors can improve emergency monitoring of patients for improved services in out-hospital and in-hospital scenarios. Finally, they give an account of advantages and disadvantages NBIoT in the emergency medical applications.

NarrowBand-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a new 3GPP radio access technology designed to provide better coverage for Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks. To provide reliable connections with extended coverage, a repetition transmission scheme and up to three Coverage Enhancement (CE) groups are introduced into NB-IoT during both Random Access CHannel (RACH) procedure and data transmission procedure, where each CE group is configured with different repetition values and transmission resources. To characterize the RACH performance of the NB-IoT network with three CE groups, this paper develops a novel traffic-aware spatio-temporal model to analyze the RACH success probability, where both the preamble transmission outage and the collision events of each CE group jointly determine the traffic evolution and the RACH success probability. Based on this analytical model, we derive the analytical expression for the RACH success probability of a randomly chosen IoT device in each CE group over multiple time slots with different RACH schemes, including baseline, back-off (BO), access class barring (ACB), and hybrid ACB and BO schemes (ACB&BO). Our results have shown that the RACH success probabilities of the devices in three CE groups outperform that of a single CE group network but not for all the groups, which is affected by the choice of the categorizing parameters.This mathematical model and analytical framework can be applied to evaluate the performance of multiple group users of other networks with spatial separations.

Batteryless NB-IoT prototype for bidirectional communication powered by ambient light

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is an low-power wide area network based on cellar architecture. The repetition scheme is a key solution to achieve enhanced coverage with low complexity in the uplink. However, the impact of the current repetition scheme on energy consumption and coverage performance of NB-IoT are still unclear. In this paper, we conduct field measurements of the repetition scheme in terms of energy efficiency. We find that most of repetition values configured by the eNodeB lead to non-optimal energy efficiency. Then we propose an adaptive repetition scheme based on a regression block delivery rate (BDR) model which can be derived from a theoretical model and a small number of measurements. We conduct simulations based on real-world measurement data. The results show that the proposed adaptive repetition scheme outperforms the default repetition scheme in both energy efficiency and data transmission rate.