What is NB-IoT technology?
Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) radio technology standard developed by 3GPP to enable a wide range of cellular devices and services.
The Narrowband Internet of Things has become an important branch of the Internet of Everything. NB-IoT is built on a cellular network and consumes only about 180kHz of bandwidth. It can be directly deployed on a GSM network, UMTS network, or LTE network to reduce deployment costs and achieve smooth upgrades.
NB-IoT is an emerging technology in the IoT field, which supports the cellular data connection of low-power devices in the wide-area network. It is also called a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN).
NB-IoT supports efficient connection of devices with long standby times and high network connection requirements. It is said that the battery life of NB-IoT devices can be increased by at least 10 years, while also providing very comprehensive indoor cellular data connection coverage.
NB-LTE and NB-CIoT are further integrated to form NB-IoT; it is expected that the NB-IoT standard will appear in 3GPP R13 and be frozen in June 2016.
Previously, with respect to the NB-LTE promoted by Ericsson, Nokia, and Intel, mainstream operators including Qualcomm, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile, China Unicom, Bell, and other mainstream operators, chip vendors, and upstream and downstream equipment system industry chains have all joined the camp.
NB-IoT focuses on the Low Power Wide Coverage (LPWA) Internet of Things (IoT) market and is an emerging technology that can be widely used worldwide. It has the characteristics of wide coverage, multiple connections, fast speed, low cost, low power consumption, and excellent architecture. NB-IoT uses the license frequency band and can adopt three deployment methods: in-band, guard band, or an independent carrier, to coexist with existing networks.
NB-IoT prospects advantages
Mobile communication is moving from the connection between people and people to the connection between people and things and things and things. The interconnection of all things is an inevitable trend.
However, the current 4G network lacks the ability to connect things with things.
In fact, compared to short-distance communication technologies such as Bluetooth and ZigBee, mobile cellular networks have the characteristics of wide coverage, mobility, and a large number of connections, which can bring richer application scenarios and should become the main connection technology of the Internet of Things.
As an evolutionary technology of LTE, in addition to having a peak rate of up to 1Gbps, 4.5G also means more connections based on the cellular Internet of Things, support for M2M connections, and lower latency, which will boost HD video, VoLTE, and the Internet of Things, etc. The application is rapidly spreading. The cellular Internet of Things is opening up an unprecedented broad market.
For telecom operators, Internet of Things applications such as the Internet of Vehicles, smart medical care, and smart homes will generate connections, which far exceed the communication needs between people.
NB-IoT has four major characteristics
The first is wide coverage, which will provide improved indoor coverage. In the same frequency band, NB-IoT has a gain of 20dB over the existing network, which is equivalent to an increase of 100 times the capacity of the coverage area;
The second is the ability to support connections. One sector of NB-IoT can support 100,000 connections, supporting low latency sensitivity, ultra-low equipment costs, low equipment power consumption, and optimized network architecture;
The third is lower power consumption. The standby time of the NB-IoT terminal module can be as long as 10 years;
The fourth is lower module cost. The company expects a single connected module to be no more than $5.
NB-IoT focuses on the Low Power Wide Coverage (LPWA) Internet of Things (IoT) market and is an emerging technology that can be widely used worldwide. It has the characteristics of wide coverage, multiple connections, low speed, low cost, low power consumption, and excellent architecture.
NB-IoT uses the license frequency band and can adopt three deployment methods: in-band, guard band, or an independent carrier, to coexist with existing networks.
Because NB-IoT has its own advantages of low power consumption, wide coverage, low cost, and large capacity, it can be widely used in a variety of vertical industries, such as remote meter reading, asset tracking, smart parking, smart agriculture, etc.
NB-IoT demand development
With the advent of the era of smart cities and big data, wireless communication will realize the connection of all things. Many companies predict that the number of global IoT connections will be hundreds of billions in the future. There have been a large number of connections between things, but most of these connections are carried by short-distance communication technologies such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi but are not mobile networks of operators.
In order to meet the needs of different IoT services, based on the features of IoT services and mobile communication networks, 3GPP has carried out technical research on enhancing the functions of mobile communication networks based on narrowband service application scenarios to meet the booming IoT service requirements.
We are entering the era of the Internet of Everything (IoT), which is a huge opportunity for the entire mobile communications industry.
The basis for all this is to have ubiquitous network connections. The operator’s network is the network with the most extensive coverage in the world, so it has unique advantages in access capabilities.
However, a reality that cannot be ignored is that the connections between things and things that are actually carried on the mobile network only account for 10% of the total number of connections, and most things and things connections are carried by technologies such as Bluetooth and WiFi.
For this reason, the industry chain has been studying the use of narrowband LTE technology to carry IoT connections since a few years ago. After several renames and technological evolution, in September 2015, 3GPP officially named this technology NB-IoT. At MWC2016, NB-IoT made its debut and attracted attention. Operators and equipment vendors have endorsed their platforms and endorsements.
Huawei said: NB-IoT is an important opportunity for the cellular network industry to cope with the Internet of Everything. We are very optimistic about the commercial prospects of NB-IoT and recommend it as the primary choice for IoT connection technology.
Commercial and technical advantages of NB-IoT
From a business perspective, the cellular network covers more than 50% of the world’s geographic area and 90% of the population, making it the most complete network.
From a technical perspective, NB-IoT has four major technical advantages.
The first is the wide coverage. Compared with the traditional GSM, a base station can provide 10 times the area coverage;
The second is the connection, the 200KHz bandwidth can provide 100,000 connections;
The third is the low power consumption, which can work for ten years with AA batteries. No need to charge;
The fourth is low cost, the module cost is less than 5 dollars.
Assuming that there are about 5 million physical sites in the world, all of which are deployed with NB-IoT, each site has 3 sectors, each sector is deployed at 200kHz, and each sensor sends 100 bytes per hour, then the number of sensors that can be connected to global sites is as high as 450 billion.
NB-IoT can be widely used in a variety of vertical industries, such as remote meter reading, asset tracking, smart parking, smart agriculture, etc. As the first version of the 3GPP standard is released in June, a batch of test networks and small-scale commercial networks will appear. NB-IoT will stand out among multiple low-power wide-area network technologies.
NB-IoT presents huge development opportunities in Europe and even the world. By 2020, the value of the entire IoT industry chain is expected to reach 3 trillion euros, including the upstream and downstream of the entire industry chain, such as network connections, data processing, platform applications, and business cooperation.
ZigBee, Bluetooth, and built-in WiFi are also developing rapidly. Operators must compete fiercely with vertical industries and must quickly formulate unified IoT standards to promote cross-industry development.
80%-90% of IoT devices are connected by low-power indoor systems, and the remaining devices are connected by cellular networks. Many people believe that the newly emerging LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) technology has low cost and wide coverage, which will bring good opportunities for mobile operators to develop the Internet of Things.
Turn to narrowband IoT
For the narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) used in the LPWA network, the operating business has reached a consensus that the authorized spectrum should be used and the in-band and guard bands should be deployed independently. This emerging technology can provide wide-area network coverage and is designed to provide support for IoT devices with low throughput, cost, and energy consumption.
In November 2015, several major global operators joined equipment vendors, chip manufacturers, and related international organizations to hold a preparatory meeting for the NB-IoT Forum in Hong Kong, aiming to accelerate the development of the narrowband IoT ecosystem.
Members include China Mobile, China Unicom, Etisalat, LG Uplus, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Vodafone, GSMA, GTI, Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm and Intel.
The six operator members also announced that they will establish six NB-IoT open laboratories around the world, focusing on NB-IoT business innovation, industry development, interoperability testing, and product compatibility verification.
Narrowband IoT has four major advantages: long battery life (more than ten years), low cost (less than US$5 per module), large capacity (a single cell can support 100,000 connections), and wide coverage (can cover underground).
With all core technologies in place, such as network connections, cloud services, big data analysis, and low-cost sensors, the Internet of Things has entered a stage of rapid development from its infancy, and most analysts agree.
More and more industries are already using IoT technology to improve efficiency, increase customer satisfaction and reduce operating costs. For example, Bosch, a manufacturer of auto parts, household appliances, and security systems, has connected many product lines and has directly benefited from the rise of mobile internet technology, especially in the field of the Internet of Vehicles.
In the medical field, Philips has developed a number of electronic medical applications, including a patch for patients with chronic diseases. The patch uses sensors to collect patient health data in real-time and transmits it to the cloud platform. Medical staff can monitor the data and take medical intervention measures in due course.
In order to meet the huge opportunities in the field of the Internet of Things, the entire industry not only needs to promote technological innovation but also needs to promote business model innovation and cross-industry collaboration. Due to the variety of use cases, applications, and business models, the IoT market will be more fragmented than the mobile market.
NB-IoT urgently needs an open platform
The NB-IoT industry ecosystem is growing rapidly, and it requires operators and IoT-related industry participants to cooperate sincerely and work together.
Just the day before MWC2016 was held, the GSMA united all parties to hold the world’s first NB-IoT summit and set up the NB-IoT forum at the meeting. The alliance members include global mainstream operators, network equipment manufacturers and major chip module manufacturers, and many other industry chain companies.
In this regard, many operators have jointly established Open Lab with telecom equipment vendors including Huawei. It is reported that with the help of Open Lab, vertical industry manufacturers can easily verify their IoT applications, networks, and business models on the actual live network.
2016 is a critical year for the NB-IoT industry
With the freezing of 3GPP standards in June, after the baptism of the market, NB-IoT will stand out from the competition among multiple technologies in the LPWA market and become the best choice for leading operators. At the same time, 2016 will also be the first commercial year of NB-IoT.
There are many chip manufacturers and module manufacturers supporting the development of NB-IoT. In terms of network, Huawei plans to launch a system that supports NB-IoT in the second half of 2016. Many other network equipment suppliers also plan to implement support for NB-IoT.
It is reported that only 10% of IoT applications are currently based on cellular networks. Cellular networks have coverage advantages and cost advantages. Huawei is ready to complete commercial use in 2016.
At the same time, under the advocacy of the GSMA NB-IoT Forum, Huawei and operators jointly established development laboratories to strengthen cooperation between enterprises.
Huawei has established six NB-IoT open laboratories around the world with China Mobile, Emirates Telecom, LG Uplus, Shanghai Unicom, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone, focusing on joint innovation, industrial development, and integration verification of NB-IoT, and exploring new commercial applications Cases and business models, and will result in the entire industry.
It is understood that Huawei and mobile operator Vodafone will jointly establish an NB-IoT open laboratory to promote the development and promotion of NB-IoT technology. The NB-IoT open laboratory using pre-standard NB-IoT technology will study network solution verification, new application innovation, equipment integration, business model research, and product qualification verification.
NB-IoT will be commercialized on a large scale soon
On June 16, 2016, at the 72nd meeting of the 3GPPRAN plenary meeting held in Busan, South Korea, NB-IoT was an important topic of the meeting, and its corresponding 3GPP protocol-related content was approved by the RAN plenary meeting, marking the acceptance of wireless The relevant research on the NB-IoT standard core protocol widely supported by the industry has been completed.
The successful completion of the standardization work also indicates that NB-IoT is about to enter the stage of large-scale commercial use, and the development of the Internet of Things industry is ready to take off.
With the freezing of standards, more industry chain companies will join the NB-IoT camp, which will promote the rapid commercialization of NB-IoT. The commercial use of NB-IoT will also build the world’s largest cellular IoT ecosystem.
The current meter reading scheme has the challenges of poor depth coverage, high power consumption, and high cost. The smart water meter business integrates a circuit board with a special chip in the water tank, which not only can achieve more accurate meter reading data transmission but also intelligently monitor and control the water tank switch, highlighting the advantages of NB-IoT technology in terms of coverage enhancement.
Open laboratory
On February 22, 2016, Huawei and mobile operator Vodafone will jointly establish an NB-IoT open laboratory to promote the development and promotion of NB-IoT technology.
The NB-IoT open laboratory using pre-standard NB-IoT technology will study network solution verification, new application innovation, equipment integration, business model research, and product qualification verification.
NB-IoT technology will expand the application of the Internet of Things (IoT) by more effectively connecting objects that require a longer battery life. It is expected that the first batch of devices connected by NB-IoT technology will appear at the end of 2016 or early 2017.
Vodafone and Huawei integrated the technology into the existing mobile network in Spain and then sent the first pre-standard NB-IoT information to the u-blox module installed in the water meter. The test will be incorporated into the NB-IoT Open Laboratory Consortium.
NB-IoT market space
The scale of communication between people is close to the ceiling, and things and things have just entered the fast-growing lane. With the opening of emerging markets such as wearables, the Internet of Vehicles, and smartwatches, concepts such as Industry 4.0, smart cities, and smart agriculture are reflected in reality, and the era of the Internet of Everything is accelerating.
The future of the Internet of Things (IoT) is full of imagination. Huawei believes that there will be 100 billion connections worldwide by 2025, most of which are related to the Internet of Things.
The connection requirements of the Internet of Things are very different from those of traditional cellular networks, and the Narrowband Cellular Internet of Things (NB-IoT) emerged from this.
This emerging technology promoted by the telecommunications industry has the characteristics of wide coverage, multiple connections, low speed, low cost, low power consumption, and excellent architecture, and has great commercial potential.
NB-IoT will cover 25% of IoT connections in the future. For operators facing user saturation and OTT impact, NB-IoT will open up a vast new market and bring more than three times the growth of connections; while for traditional industry practitioners who are actively transforming and upgrading, it is adapting Scenarios, network performance, manageability, and reliability, etc. also have the inherent advantages of the operator’s network.
How was NB-IoT born?
The birth of NB-IoT is not accidental, it is pinned on the telecom industry’s vision for the Internet of Things market. Its predecessor can be traced back to the NB-M2M jointly proposed by Huawei and Vodafone in May 2014.
The narrowband cellular Internet of Things concept initiated by these two companies has been recognized by the industry as soon as it is proposed. Subsequently, more and more industry giants such as Qualcomm and Ericsson have joined the standardization research in this direction.
In order to promote the unification of standards and benefit the development of the industry, 3GPP finally reached an agreement at the RAN plenary meeting in September 2015 to establish NB IoT as a standard for the narrowband cellular Internet of Things and set up a project for Work Item to start agreement writing, which is expected to be June 2016 The 3GPP R13 freezes.
NBIoT has significant advantages in IoT applications, which are unmatched by traditional cellular network technology and short-distance transmission technologies such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. First of all, its coverage is wider. In the same frequency band, NB-IoT has a gain of 20dB over the existing network, and the coverage area is 100 times larger.
The second is the ability to support connections. One sector of NB-IoT can support 100,000 connections. There are about 5 million physical sites in the world. Assuming that all NB-IoT is deployed with three sectors per site, the number of IoT terminals that can be accessed will be as high as 450 billion.
At the same time, the power consumption of NB-IoT is lower, only 1/10 of 2G, and the standby time of the terminal module can be as long as 10 years. The cost will also be lower, and the module cost is expected to drop to less than US$5. In the future, with the scale effect and technological evolution brought about by market development, power consumption, and costs are expected to be further reduced.
In addition, in terms of supporting big data, the data collected by the NB-IoT connection can be directly uploaded to the cloud, while technologies such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi have no such convenience.
NB-IoT practice and results
Although the standard formulation has not yet been completed, NB-IoT applications have been gradually rolled out and have been affirmed by all parties in practice. During the 2015 Mobile World Congress (MWC 2015), Vodafone and Huawei jointly demonstrated the smart meter reading business.
Similar to smart parking, NB IoT also has broad application prospects in low-power wide-area networks such as smart agriculture and smart manufacturing.
Due to the high technical requirements brought about by the special application scenarios, these applications have always lacked proprietary wireless technology. NBIoT can fill this gap in the market well, thus supporting the development of the Internet of Things in a wider field.
Today, the ecosystem surrounding NB-IoT has taken shape and continues to expand. The conditions for embracing the Internet of Everything are beginning to mature. At the network equipment supplier level, leaders such as Huawei and Ericsson have all launched end-to-end solutions based on NB-IoT.
At the operator level, China Mobile, China Unicom, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Telecom Italia, AT&T, and other top global operators have all released their own development plans for NB-IoT and launched pilot projects.
In vertical industries, more and more manufacturers have begun to adopt NB-IoT technology to enhance their competitiveness. For example, smart trolley cases with smart tracking, over-distance alarm, electronic lock control, battery monitoring, and other functions, and manufacturers have launched smart bicycles with location-based anti-theft functions, information uploading, and tracking functions.
In addition, the deployment of NB-IoT is also increasing in the areas of municipal street lights and waste management, environmental monitoring, and livestock breeding irrigation.
Before NB-IoT, the IoT industry had different paths for terminals, networks, chips, operating systems, platforms, etc., which made the “fragmentation” phenomenon of the Internet of Things serious. The NB-IoT giant alliance may become an opportunity to end fragmentation and unify the Internet of Things.
NB-IoT was established
[Spain, Barcelona, February 21, 2016] GSMA and Huawei, Vodafone, Ericsson, China Mobile, China Unicom, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, GTI, Intel, KDDI, KT, LG Uplus, Mediatek, Nokia, Oberthur Technologies, Qualcomm, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Verizon co-sponsored the establishment of the NB-IoT Forum and held the first global NB IoT summit.
NB-IoT is a cellular network technology approved by the 3GPP and applied to the LPWA (Low Power Wide Area Network) market. The LPWA market is considered an important development direction for the cellular Internet of Things market in the future.
Its own advantages such as low power consumption, wide coverage, low cost, and large capacity make it widely used in applications such as remote meter reading, smart agriculture, and asset tracking.
NB-IoT Forum aims to promote the healthy, rapid, and sustainable development of the industrial chain, and expand the innovation and application of mobile operator networks in the field of the Internet of Things.
The forum encourages operators and equipment vendors to cooperate to establish NarrowBand IoT open laboratories, provide development and testing environments for innovation and applications, and accelerate technological innovation and marketization.
The establishment of this forum marks that the NB-IoT industry has reached a new milestone and has an end-to-end whole industry chain ecological environment. As more partners join, the entire industry will move forward more rapidly.
What are the NB-IoT deployment methods?
NB-IoT supports three deployment methods: In-Band, Guard Band, and Stand-alone.
Stand-alone operation (ST)
Not dependent on LTE, and LTE can be completely decoupled.
It is suitable for replowing the GSM band, the channel bandwidth of GSM is 200KHz, which just leaves space for NB-IoT 180KHz bandwidth, and there is a 10KHz protection interval on both sides.
Guard band operation (GB)
Does not occupy LTE resources.
Utilize the resource block of unused 180KHz bandwidth in the LTE edge protection band.
In-band operation(IB)
Occupies 1 PRB resource of LTE.
Can be the same PCI as LTE or different PCI from LTE, generally speaking, if the IB method is used, it tends to be set to the same PCI as LTE.
What does it mean? First, the NB also has PCI, so the same frequency networking is feasible, unlike GSM, second, the PCI is also 504, so you can reuse the PCI planning of LTE, third, the PCI generation, the function is basically the same)
What is the working mode of NB-IoT?
Connected
After the module is registered to the network in this state, it can send and receive data, no data interaction for more than a period of time will enter Idle mode, and the time can be configured.
Idle
It can send and receive data, and receive downlink data will enter the Connected state, no data interaction for more than a period of time will enter PSM mode, and the time can be configured.
PSM
In this mode, the terminal turns off the transceiver and does not listen to the paging on the wireless side, so although it is still registered in the network, signaling is not reachable, and downlink data cannot be received with little power.
The duration is configured by the core network (T3412), and it will enter the Connected state when there is uplink data to be transmitted or at the end of the TAU cycle.
What are the NB-IoT frequency bands and frame structure?
In the R16 version, the bands supported by NB are extended to bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 28, 31, 41, 42, 43, 65, 66, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 85, 87 and 88, which are consistent with the E-Utran bands.
NB1 and NB2 are also available for NR bands n1, n2, n3, n5, n7, n8, n12, n14, n18, n20, n25, n28, n41, n65, n66, n70, n71, n74, n90. NB systems can be used in either HD-FDD duplex mode or TDD mode.
What are the applications of NB-IoT?
1. Public Utilities
Smart water meter, smart water service, smart gas meter, smart heat meter.
2. Smart City
Smart parking, smart street light, smart garbage can, smart cellar well cover.
3. Consumer Electronics
Independent wearable devices, smart bicycles, chronic disease management systems, elderly and children management.
4. Device management
Equipment status monitoring, white goods management, large public infrastructure, pipeline corridor safety monitoring.
5. Intelligent building
Environmental alarm system, central air conditioning supervision, elevator IOT, human defense space coverage.
6. Command logistics
Cold chain logistics, container tracking, fixed asset tracking, financial asset tracking.
7. Agriculture and Environment
Agricultural Internet of things, animal husbandry breeding, real-time air monitoring, real-time water quality monitoring.
8. Other applications
Other applications such mobile payment, smart community, smart home, and heritage protection.
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