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. 2019 Jun 8;19(11):2613.
doi: 10.3390/s19112613.

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT): From Physical (PHY) and Media Access Control (MAC) Layers Perspectives

Collins Burton Mwakwata  1 , Hassan Malik  2 , Muhammad Mahtab Alam  3 , Yannick Le Moullec  4 , Sven Parand  5 , Shahid Mumtaz  6
Affiliations

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT): From Physical (PHY) and Media Access Control (MAC) Layers Perspectives

Collins Burton Mwakwata et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

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.

Keywords: 5G; IoT; MAC; NB-IoT; PHY; deployment; mMTC; narrowband; survey.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The geographical representation of countries with the ongoing NB-IoT real-life deployments for diverse use cases (May 2019).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Narrow band Interet of Things (NB-IoT) Flexible Allocation inside Long-Term Evolution (LTE) spectrum (in-band and guard-band) and when refarming the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) spectrum (standalone).
Figure 3
Figure 3
NB-IoT Downlink Frame Structure: subframe number 0 carries the Narrowband Physical Broadcast Channel (NPBCH), 1 to 4, and 6 to 8 carry the Narrowband Physical Downlink Control Channel (NPDCCH)/Narrowband Physical Downlink Shared Channel (NPDSCH), and 5 and 9 carry the Narrowband Primary Synchronization Signal (NPSS)/Narrowband Secondary Synchronization Signal (NSSS) (A) When the subframe is carrying control channels and (B) when the subframe is carrying data.
Figure 4
Figure 4
NB-IoT Uplink Frame Structure, (A) when 15 kHz spacing is used with different tone-allocation possibilities with slot duration of 0.5 ms and (B) when 3.75 kHz is used only single-tone allocation is supported with 4 times longer slot duration (2 ms).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Representation of NB-IoT IP and Non-IP data path: Blue line displays the IP data path in UP mode (as Legacy LTE), Red line displays the non-IP data path in CP mode, and dashed-line displays the IP data path in CP mode.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Summary of NB-IoT deployment strategies. For example, when NB-IoT is deployed in macrocell and LTE in small cell, when LTE is in macrocell and NB-IoT is in small cells, when NB-IoT is in macrocell and small cells support both NB-IoT and LTE, and when LTE is in macrocell and LTE/NB-IoT is in small cells
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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