​What are the advantages of NB-IoT?

What are the advantages of NB-IoT?

As a technology applied to low-rate services, the advantages of NB-IoT are not difficult to imagine:

 • Strong link: In the case of the same base station, NB-IoT can provide 50-100 times the number of accesses than existing wireless technologies. One sector can support 100,000 connections, supporting low latency sensitivity, ultra-low equipment cost, low equipment power consumption and optimized network architecture. For example, limited by bandwidth, operators only open 8-16 access ports for each router in the family, and there are often multiple mobile phones, notebooks, and tablet computers in a family. Hundreds of sensor devices need to be connected to the Internet, which has become a difficult problem. NB-IoT is enough to easily meet the networking needs of a large number of devices in future smart homes.

• High coverage: NB-IoT has strong indoor coverage, with a 20dB gain compared to LTE, which is equivalent to a 100-fold increase in coverage area capability. Not only can it meet the needs of wide coverage in rural areas, but it is also suitable for applications that require deep coverage such as factory areas, underground garages, and manhole covers. Take manhole cover monitoring as an example. In the past, the GPRS method required an antenna to be extended, and the vehicles were easily damaged. As long as NB-IoT is properly deployed, this problem can be well solved.

• Low power consumption: Low power consumption is an important indicator for IoT applications, especially for some devices and occasions where batteries cannot be replaced frequently, such as various sensor monitoring devices placed in remote areas of alpine wilderness. Smartphones are charged once a day, and a battery life of several years is the most essential requirement. NB-IoT focuses on small data volume and low rate applications, so the power consumption of NB-IoT devices can be very small, and the battery life of the device can be greatly increased from the past few months to several years.

• Low cost: Compared with LoRa, NB-IoT does not need to rebuild the network, and the radio frequency and antenna are basically reused. Taking China Mobile as an example, there is a relatively wide frequency band in 900MHZ, and it is only necessary to clear a part of the 2G frequency band to directly deploy LTE and NB-IoT at the same time. Low speed, low power consumption, and low bandwidth also bring low-cost advantages to NB-IoT chips and modules. Modules are expected to cost no more than $5.

How does NB-IoT achieve low power consumption?

 Compared with GPRS, the biggest feature of NB-IoT is low power consumption. In addition to the relatively low transmission rate of NB-IoT itself, NB-IoT introduces eDRX power saving technology and PSM power saving mode, which is also the main reason for power saving.

In the PSM mode, the NB-IoT terminal is still registered on the network, but does not accept signaling, so that the terminal stays in deep sleep for a longer time to save power.

In addition, the eDRX power-saving technology extends the sleep period of the terminal in idle mode and reduces unnecessary activation of the signal receiving unit. In general, these measures are to make the terminal sleep more time and sleep quality better, and thus lower power consumption.