Narrowband internet of things (NB-IoT) is a recent cellular radio access technology based on Long-Term Evolution (LTE) introduced by Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for Low-Power ...Wide-Area Networks (LPWAN). The main aim of NB-IoT is to support massive machine-type communication (mMTC) and enable low-power, low-cost, and low-data-rate communication. NB-IoT is based on LTE design with some changes to meet the mMTC requirements. For example, in the physical (PHY) layer only single-antenna and low-order modulations are supported, and in the Medium Access Control (MAC) layers only one physical resource block is allocated for resource scheduling. The aim of this survey is to provide a comprehensive overview of the design changes brought in the NB-IoT standardization along with the detailed research developments from the perspectives of Physical and MAC layers.
NB-IoT is a promising cellular technology for enabling low cost, low power, long-range connectivity to IoT devices. With the bandwidth requirement of 180 kHz, it provides the flexibility to deploy ...within the existing LTE band. However, this raises serious concerns about the performance of the technology due to severe interference from multi-tier 5G HetNets. Furthermore, as NB-IoT is based on HD-FDD, the symmetric allocation of spectrum band between the downlink and uplink results in underutilization of resources, particularly in the case of asymmetric traffic distribution. Therefore, an innovative RRM strategy needs to be devised to improve spectrum efficiency and device connectivity. This article presents the detailed design challenges that need to be addressed for the RRM of NB-IoT and proposes a novel framework to devise an efficient resource allocation scheme by exploiting cooperative interference prediction and flexible duplexing techniques.
The fifth-generation (5G) and beyond 5G (B5G) wireless networks introduced massive machine-type communications (mMTC) to cope with the growing demand of massive Internet of Things (IoT) applications. ...However, the heterogeneous characteristics of massive IoT and diverse quality of service (QoS) requirements may lead to severe interference that could degrade the expected QoS of the cellular ecosystem. Therefore, this article studies the impact of interference caused by mMTC connections. We theoretically model the intercell interference (ICI) minimization problem for the existing orthogonal multiple access (OMA) technique and propose its corresponding solution. Furthermore, we jointly solve the ICI and the cochannel interference minimization problem for the IoT users when the nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique is used. For the proposed OMA and NOMA schemes, we design a cooperative scheduler to reduce the impact of such interference. The results show that our proposed schemes provide up to 58%, 75%, and 100% more improvements in terms of user's data rates, energy consumption, and connection density, respectively.
NarrowBand Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is an emerging cellular IoT technology that offers attractive features for deploying low-power wide-area networks suitable for implementing massive machine-type ...communications. NB-IoT features include, e.g., extended coverage and deep penetration for massive connectivity, longer battery-life, appropriate throughput, and desired latency at lower bandwidth. Regarding the device energy consumption, NB-IoT is mostly underestimated for its control and signaling overheads, which calls for a better understanding of the energy consumption profiling of an NB-IoT radio transceiver. With this aim, this work presents a thorough investigation of the energy consumption profiling of the radio resource control (RRC) communication protocol between an NB-IoT radio transceiver and a cellular base station. Using two different commercial off the shelf NB-IoT boards and two mobile network operators (MNOs) NB-IoT test networks operational at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, we propose an empirical baseline energy consumption model. Based on comprehensive analyses of the profile traces from the widely used BG96 NB-IoT module operating in various states of the RRC protocol, our results indicate that the proposed model accurately depicts the baseline energy consumption of an NB-IoT radio transceiver while operating at different coverage class levels. The evaluation errors of our proposed model vary between 0.33% and 15.38%.
In this paper, we propose an inter-cell interference (ICI) minimization scheme for uplink transmission in the narrowband internet of things (NB-IoT) systems. We first establish the theoretical ICI ...problem formulation and propose its corresponding solution for the orthogonal multiple access (OMA) NB-IoT system. Based on the theoretical formulation, we design a cooperative radio resource scheduler that reduces the impact of ICI and allocates transmit powers to reduce the energy consumption to the scheduled users in a multi-cell scenario. We compare the performance of the proposed scheme with that of some benchmark OMA schedulers. The results show that the proposed technique significantly reduces the impact of ICI and hence is more suitable for the massive connectivity of the NB-IoT system. For example, the users operating under the proposed approach experience up to 50% reduced energy consumption when compared to the best channel quality indicator (CQI) scheme. Furthermore, 30% and 35% improvements in terms of achieved user's data rates are obtained as compared to the MaxMin and round-robin schemes, respectively.
uRLLC (ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications) requires a new paradigm in 5G cellular networks to satisfy extreme latency and reliability thresholds. Further, such constraints have a wide range ...due to different use case scenarios. Consequently, how to configure suitable radio frame structure that matches to the latency and reliability requirements of the given use-case is an open question. This article addresses the above-mentioned issue and provides a preliminary investigation and a feasible solution by exploiting antenna port selection index (APSI) calculated using fuzzy logic algorithm, which is further communicated through physical uplink control channel. Closed-form expressions of outage probability for the number of users, under given latency and reliability constraints have been provided with the mathematical proof and the results were simulated based on the prior availability of APSI. It is shown that outage probability improves up to 30% in case of dynamic radio frame configuration.
5G networks promise high data rates, low latency and extreme reliability. Existing literature is saturated with simulation and numerical investigations on 5G. However, a limited number of studies are ...available on the evaluation of 5G networks in real-time heterogeneous environments. As 5G networks are being deployed worldwide. Therefore, it is significant to analyse the performance of 5G network in real life, which can be helpful for planning future deployments. This study provides the implementation of a portable 5G testbed and presents the experimental results of ground and aerial measurement campaign in order to evaluate the performance of 5G network operating at 3.5 GHz in terms of coverage, throughput and latency.
NB-IoT based Visual Smart Waste Management System Khan, Sikandar Zulqarnain; Hein, Haigo; Alam, Muhammad Mahtab ...
2022 18th Biennial Baltic Electronics Conference (BEC),
2022-Oct.-4
Conference Proceeding
NB-IoT technology is characterized by e.g. wide coverage, massive connectivity, reduced device energy consumption, and lower device cost, making it a suitable choice for the Internet of Things (IoT) ...vision. With these NB-IoT provisions, this work presents an NB-IoT based visual Smart Waste Management System (SWMS) that involve the design and development of cost-effective visual smart bins with reduced complexity, low power consumption, and easy installation so as to retrofit the existing traditional bins. Thanks to NB-IoT, these smart bins provide long-range connectivity to a multitude of bins so they can trans-mit their visual data to a remote cloud server. Since the cloud server is a compute-intensive platform, it can further process these images through utilising appropriate image processing (IP), Artificially Intelligent (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms for efficient waste-management including waste-collection, waste-classification, waste-prediction, and waste-planning.
The design changes on the physical (PHY) layer, i.e. the limited system bandwidth of one physical resource block (PRB), single antenna support, lower-order modulations, etc. inhibit the mapping of ...traditional long term evolution (LTE) radio resource management techniques to narrowband internet of things (NB-IoT) systems. Consequently, possible interference due to massive connectivity may severely degrade the expected system performance. In this regard, we propose an interference avoidance scheduling algorithm for NB-IoT systems. The algorithm entails a cooperative strategy in which the base stations share their respective scheduling tables which are then used to compute the interference for future transmitting user equipment (UEs). The computed interference values are then used as input to individual base station schedulers to perform scheduling. Each base station's scheduler then allocates the radio resources to the UEs with the lowest possible interference. Extensive simulations are carried out to analyze the performance of our proposed algorithm and compare it to the conventional Round-Robin scheduling scheme. The results show that our proposed algorithm provides up to 36 % throughput improvement to the NB-IoT UE as compared to Round-Robin. Similarly, for the same device's locations, the UEs are experiencing relatively better maximum coupling loss (MCL) which results in lower repetition numbers per coverage class.
Recent advancements in cellular technologies allow discrete computing devices embedded with sensors to communicate over long distances with low-cost and low-energy consumption. This could drastically ...impact the future internet of thing (IoT) ecosystem. In this regard, Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has introduced a new cellular-based technology called Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) which is one of the potential technologies for enabling IoT application in vehicular, health-care, industry 4.0, etc. However, NB-IoT technology is still in its infancy and so far it is unclear whether it is sufficiently reliable to complement or replace existing short-range and cellular technologies to enable such use-case scenarios. Therefore, this paper presents a preliminary investigation of the coverage of NB-IoT in three different scenarios i.e., outdoor, indoor, and underground with empirical measurements, one of the key performance indicators in which operators are most interested. The measurements were conducted on Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) campus and nearby residential areas within a range of 700 m. The obtained results indicate that NB-IoT is able to provide good connectivity to meet the IoT application requirements in outdoor and indoor environments. However, for an underground scenario with the beam enabled for 700 m, it is only possible to provide connectivity to the devices up to 400 m. Furthermore, it is also observed that NB-IoT is able to provide connectivity to devices with a received signal strength indicator (RSSI) value as low as −105 dBm as compared to −95 dBm as in long-term evolution (LTE).
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