Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a new cellular technology introduced in 3GPP Release 13 for providing wide-area coverage for the Internet of Things (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 life time, support of massive number 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.
@article{arxiv.1606.04171,
title = {A Primer on 3GPP Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT)},
author = {Y. -P. Eric Wang and Xingqin Lin and Ansuman Adhikary and Asbjörn Grövlen and Yutao Sui and Yufei Blankenship and Johan Bergman and Hazhir S. Razaghi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.04171},
year = {2016}
}