NarrowBand-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a standards-based low power wide area (LPWA) technology developed to enable a wide range of new IoT devices and services. NB-IoT significantly improves the power consumption of user devices, system capacity and spectrum efficiency, especially in deep coverage. Battery life of more than 10 years can be supported for a wide range of use cases.
New physical layer signals and channels are designed to meet the demanding requirement of extended coverage – rural and deep indoors – and ultra-low device complexity. Initial cost of the NB-IoT modules is expected to be comparable to GSM/GPRS. The underlying technology is however much simpler than today’s GSM/GPRS and its cost is expected to decrease rapidly as demand increases.
Supported by all major mobile equipment, chipset and module manufacturers, NB-IoT can co-exist with 2G, 3G, and 4G mobile networks. It also benefits from all the security and privacy features of mobile networks, such as support for user identity confidentiality, entity authentication, confidentiality, data integrity, and mobile equipment identification.
Narrowband-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is designed to connect low power IoT applications and devices.
Cellular LPWA networks are particularly well suited for battery-powered asset tracking applications, like trailer, bin, container, livestock and equipment tracking, as they support incredibly low power consumption, improved range, and better performance as compared with 2G, 3G, and even LoRaWAN and Sigfox networks, depending on the application.
- Battery Life – Optimised for the infrequent transmission of small amounts of data, NB-IoT enables extremely long battery life – over 30x battery life on NB-IoT versus 2G
- Range – Excellent range, including extended-range indoors
- Performance – Cellular-grade wireless technology performance can handle more data than other LPWANs
- OTA Device Management – NB-IoT supports two-way communication with devices which enables over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates and remote debugging – this is critical in battery-powered asset tracking, where we strive to minimise the amount of interaction with a device once deployed as much as possible!
- Cost and Complexity – NB-IoT devices are generally less complex and cost less to produce, deploy, and manage, which means it’s now more affordable for businesses to track all their assets, not just vehicles
- Future-Proof – NB-IoT networks are now formally recognized as 5G technologies, which means the technology will be supported long into the future
