Experimental assessment of battery lifetime for commercial off-the-shelf NB-IoT module

Abstract

Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) connectivity, a wireless wide area technology that is characterized for interconnecting devices with low bandwidth connectivity and focusing on range and power efficiency, is seen as one of the fastest-growing components of Internet-of-Things (IoT). The LPWA connectivity is used to serve a diverse range of vertical applications, including agriculture, consumer, industrial, logistic, smart building, smart city and utilities. 3GPP has defined the maiden Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) specification in Release 13 (Rel-13) to accommodate the LPWA demand. Several major cellular operators, such as China Mobile, Deutsch Telekom and Vodafone, have announced their NB-IoT trials or commercial network in year 2017. In Telekom Malaysia, we have setup a NB-IoT trial network for End-to-End (E2E) integration study. Our experimental assessment showed that the battery lifetime target for NB-IoT devices as stated by 3GPP utilizing latest-to-date Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) NB-IoT modules is yet to be realized. Finally, several recommendations on how to optimize the battery lifetime while designing firmware for NB-IoT device are also provided.