NB-IoT Small Cell: A 3GPP Perspective

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technology was introduced in 3GPP Release 13 to accommodate device-generated traffic over cellular networks. There have been efforts in Release 14 to deliver further improvements to facilitate the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) use cases, such as coverage enhancement, and support for low cost, low complexity and low power consumption device. Small cell NB-IoT is added as an attractive feature in 3GPP Release 15. In this article, we provide an overview of this feature and try to shed light on major aspects of small cell deployment in NB-IoT systems.