Johan Bergman

A Primer on 3GPP Narrowband Internet of Things

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a new cellular technology introduced in 3GPP Release 13 for providing wide-area coverage for IoT. This article provides an overview of the air interface of NB-IoT. We describe how NB-IoT addresses key IoT requirements such as deployment flexibility, low device complexity, long battery lifetime, support of massive numbers of devices in a cell, and significant coverage extension beyond existing cellular technologies. We also share the various design rationales during the standardization of NB-IoT in Release 13 and point out several open areas for future evolution of NB-IoT.

An overview of 3GPP enhancements on machine to machine communications

The broad connection of devices to the Internet, known as the IoT or M2M, requires lowcost power-efficient global connectivity services. New physical layer solutions, MAC procedures, and network architectures are needed to evolve the current LTE cellular systems to meet the demands of IoT services. Several steps have been taken under the 3GPP to accomplish these objectives and are included in the upcoming 3GPP LTE standards release (3GPP Release 13). In this tutorial article, we present an overview of several features included in 3GPP to accommodate the needs of M2M communications, including changes in the physical layer such as enhanced machine type communications, and new MAC and higher-layer procedures provided by extended discontinuous reception. We also briefly discuss the narrowband IoT, which is in the development stage with a target completion date of June 2016.

Positioning for the Internet of Things: A 3GPP Perspective

Many use cases in the Internet of Things (IoT) will require or benefit from location information, making positioning a vital dimension of the IoT. The 3GPP has dedicated a significant effort during its Release 14 to enhance positioning support for its IoT technologies to further improve the 3GPPbased IoT eco-system. In this article, we identify the design challenges of positioning support in LTE-M and NB-IoT, and overview the 3GPPs work in enhancing the positioning support for LTE-M and NB-IoT. We focus on OTDOA, which is a downlink based positioning method. We provide an overview of the OTDOA architecture and protocols, summarize the designs of OTDOA positioning reference signals, and present simulation results to illustrate the positioning performance.

Reducing the Modem Complexity and Achieving Deep Coverage in LTE for Machine-Type Communications

The Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as one of the focal points in the evolution of cellular networks, and has motivated the introduction of several features that facilitate Machine-Type Communications (MTC) in LTE networks. These features serve the MTC goals of reduced User Equipment (UE) modem cost and complexity, Coverage Enhancement (CE) to support UEs in remote radio locations, and an improved battery lifetime. In this paper, we discuss the features specified in LTE Release 12 and Release 13 for reducing the UE modem cost up to 81% compared to the least expensive broadband LTE UE modem. Further, we describe the techniques specified in Release 13 for the CE of physical channels that carry data or control information. We provide link-level simulation results for the CE performance over various physical channels in terms of their error rates and per-user throughput.

Coverage Improvements for Enhanced Uplink

In UMTS Enhanced Uplink (EUL), 2 and 10 ms TTIs are supported, which substantially decreases latency and increases data rates compared to DCH. However, due to the shorter TTI compared to DCH, coverage may be an issue in situations where the use of multiple re-transmissions is not feasible. This paper evaluates four possible methods to increase the EUL coverage: Configurable minimum data power offset, Freezing the Outer Loop Power Control (Freezing OLPC), Autonomous Retransmission (AR) and Improved Layer 2 (Improved L2). The coverage gains with all these methods are considerable compared to EUL Release 6 (R6). By tuning the minimum data power offset for VoIP, it is found that a coverage gain of 4-5 dB is achievable. With Improved L2 and 120 bits as the smallest transport block size, a coverage gain of up to 7 dB is possible.

Chapter 1 – The Cellular Internet of Things

This chapter introduces the overall content of the book. It contains a brief introduction to the massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC) category of use cases, spanning a wide range of applications such as smart metering and wearables. When discussing these applications, special attention is given to the service requirements associated with mMTC, for example, in terms of reachability, throughput, and latency. The chapter continues and introduces the concept of the Cellular Internet of Things (CIoT) and the three technologies Extended Coverage Global System for Mobile Communications Internet of Things (EC-GSM-IoT), Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT), and Long-Term Evolution for Machine-Type Communications (LTE-M) that can be said to define this concept. While EC-GSM-IoT and LTE-M are backward compatible solutions based on GSM and LTE, respectively, NB-IoT is a brand new radio access technology. The final part of the chapter looks beyond the set of cellular access technologies and introduces the Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) range of solutions that already have secured a significant footprint in the mMTC market. Unlike the cellular systems, these LPWANs have been designed to operate in licensed exempt spectrum. An initial discussion around the pros and cons of licensed exempt operation is presented to prepare the reader for the final chapters of the book, where a closer look is taken at operation in the unlicensed frequency domain.

NB-IoT Performance

This chapter presents the Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) performance in terms of coverage, data rate, latency, battery lifetime, and system capacity. All these performance aspects differ between the three operation modes of NB-IoT. Thus, in most cases the performance of each NB-IoT operation mode is individually presented. It shows that all the three operation modes of NB-IoT meet the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) performance objectives agreed for Cellular IoT.

Chapter 10 – 5G and the Internet of Things

This chapter describes the evolution of mobile networks toward 5G. Beyond an evolution of the mobile broadband experience, 5G will provide optimized connectivity for MTC and IoT services. An overview of the standardization activities toward massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC), as well as critical Machine-Type Communications (cMTC), with Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communications (URLLC) is presented.

EC-GSM-IoT

Abstract This chapter presents the design of Extended Coverage Global System for Mobile Communications Internet of Things (EC-GSM-IoT). The initial section describes the background of the GSM radio access technology, highlighting the suitability of an evolved GSM design to support the Cellular IoT (CIoT) core requirements, which includes ubiquitous coverage, ultra-low-device cost, and energy efficient device operation. The following sections builds from the ground up, starting with the physical layer, going through fundamental design choices such as frame structure, modulation, and channel coding. After the physical layer is covered, the basic procedures for support of full system operation are covered, including, for example, system access, paging functionality, and for EC-GSM-IoT-improved security protocols. The reader will not only have a good knowledge of EC-GSM-IoT after reading the chapter but will also have a basic understanding of what characteristics a system developed for CIoT should possess. At the end, a look at the latest enhancements of the EC-GSM-IoT design is presented.

Chapter 6 – LTE-M Performance

Abstract This chapter presents Long-Term Evolution for Machine-Type Communications (LTE-M) performance in terms of coverage, data rate, latency, and system capacity based on the 3GPP Release 13 functionality described in Chapter 5 . The methods and assumptions are to a large extent following those used for Extended Coverage Global System for Mobile Communications Internet of Things (EC-GSM-IoT) and Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) performance evaluations as described in Chapters 4 and 8 Chapter 4 Chapter 8 . When there are differences, those are explicitly described in this chapter. The reduction in device complexity achieved by LTE-M compared to earlier 3GPP releases of LTE is also presented. While LTE-M has been specified for both half-duplex frequency-division duplexing (HD-FDD) and full duplex FDD (FD-FDD) operation as well as time-division duplexing (TDD) operation, this chapter focuses on the performance achievable for LTE-M in HD-FDD operation.