Ricerc@Sapienza

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is gaining momentum as a promising technology for massive machine type communication. Given that its deployment is rapidly progressing worldwide, measurement campaigns and performance analyses are needed to better understand the system and move toward its enhancement. With this aim, this article presents a large-scale measurement campaign and empirical analysis of NB-IoT on operational networks, and discloses valuable insights in terms of deployment strategies and radio coverage performance.

The recently standardized Narrow Band Internet of
Things (NB-IOT) is expected to become a disruptive technology
in the IoT market. The low cost, manageability, and reliability
offered by a Mobile Network Operator (MNO) can be the enabler
for the widespread acceptance and deployment of IoT devices.
In this market phase, network planning plays a crucial role in
the possible services forecast, with obvious consequences on the
market analysis by the MNO. Moreover, there are many possible

In the context of massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC), 3GPP has introduced in Release 13 the Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) standard, that appears particularly suitable for uplink, delay-Tolerant low-rate communications. On the one hand, being compatible with the existing 4G cellular systems, and also envisioned as a primary player in next 5G, NB-IoT is developed upon the existing heterogeneous architecture, formed by several overlapping tiers (HetNets), e.g. macro and small cells.