Performance Measurements of Narrowband-IoT Network in Emulated and Field Testbeds

Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) as a radio access technology for the cellular Internet of Things (cIoT) is getting more traction due to attractive system parameters, new proposals in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 14 for reduced power consumption and ongoing world-wide deployment. As per 3GPP, the low-power and wide-area use cases in 5G specification will be addressed by the early NB-IoT and Long-Term Evolution for Machines (LTE-M) based technologies. Since these cIoT networks will operate in a spatially distributed environment, there are various challenges to be addressed for tests and measurements of these networks. To meet these requirements, unified emulated and field testbeds for NB-IoT-networks were developed and used for extensive performance measurements. This paper analyses the results of these measurements with regard to RF coverage, signal quality, latency, and protocol consistency.