New-Tech Europe Magazine | February 2018

Simulation Speeds NB-IoT Product Development

Takao Inoue and David Vye, AWR Group, NI

Analysts from technology research firm Gartner are predicting a population of over 26 billion devices- excluding smartphones, tablets and computers-connected to the internet of things (IoT) by 2020. This volume of connected devices will require massive support from existing wireless networks. Among the mobile IoT (MIoT) technologies to be standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) represents the most promising low power wide area network (LPWAN) radio technology, enabling a wide range of devices and services to be connected using the cellular telecommunications bands (see Figure 1). This article presents an overview of NB-IoT requirements, how they compare with LTE and the

resulting challenges for component development. The use of simulation tools for system analysis and design is demonstrated using NI AWR Design Environment, specifically, Visual System Simulator™ (VSS) system design software. VSS test bench examples are presented, including NB-IoT signals operating in the same band as an LTE signal and in the guard band of an LTE signal. System Requirements In release 13, the 3GPP specified a new radio air interface for MIoT applications. It focuses on improved indoor coverage, low-cost devices (less than $5 per module), long battery life (more than 10 years), massive connectivity (around 50,000 connected devices per cell) and low latency (less than 10 ms).

NB-IoT will enable operators to expand their wireless services to applications such as smart metering and tracking and will enable nascent opportunities such as “smart cities” and eHealth infrastructure. NB-IoT will efficiently connect these many devices using the existing mobile networks, adding small amounts of fairly infrequent two-way data, securely and reliably. The standard utilizes 180 kHz user equipment (UE) bandwidth for both downlink and uplink and can operate in three different deployment modes. As shown in Figure 2, these mode are: Standalone operation, in which a GSM operator replaces a 200 kHz GSM carrier with NB-IoT, re- farming dedicated spectrum in, for example, GSM EDGE radio access network (GERAN) systems. This is possible because both the GSM

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