NB-IoT A new era of narrowband Internet of Things

NB-IoT, Narrow BandInternet of Things, is a cellular network connection technology specially created for the "Internet of Everything" and an important branch of the Internet of Everything. As the name suggests, NB-IoT occupies a very narrow bandwidth, only about 180KHz, and uses the License band. It can be deployed in three ways: in-band, guard band or independent carrier. It can coexist with existing networks and can be directly deployed on GSM, UMTS or LTE networks, that is, 2/3/4G networks, can reuse existing networks, reduce deployment costs, and achieve smooth upgrades.

As the network with the largest coverage in the world, mobile networks have unique access capabilities. The prospects of NB-IoT connection technology based on cellular networks are even more promising. They have gradually become the key to the era of Internet of Everything and have been commercially used in the Internet of Things industry. .

The development history of NB-IoT

In 2014, Huawei and Vodafone jointly proposed NB-M2M.

In May 2015, Huawei and Qualcomm jointly announced a converged solution that uses FDMA multi-access in the uplink and OFDM multi-access in the downlink, named NB-CIoT (Narrow Band Cellular IoT).

On August 10, 2015, at the last meeting of the GERAN SI phase, Ericsson teamed up with several companies to propose the concept of NB-LTE (Narrow Band LTE).

In September 2015, 3GPP reached an agreement at the RAN plenary meeting in September 2015, and the two technical solutions of NB-CIoT and NB-LTE were integrated to form NB-IoT WID. NB-CIoT has evolved into NB-IoT (Narrow Band IoT), establishing NB-IoT as the only standard for narrowband cellular IoT.

In April 2016, at the London M2M Conference, Huawei announced the establishment of an NB-IoT open laboratory with Vodafone.

In April 2016, the NB-IoT physical layer standard was frozen in 3GPP R13.

In June 2016, the NB-IoT core standard was officially frozen in 3GPP R13.

In the first quarter of 2017, according to the "National New Generation Information Technology Industry Plan", the NB-IoT network was designated as one of the key projects of the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" for the information and communication industry.

On April 1, 2017, Haier, China Telecom, and Huawei signed a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly develop an IoT smart life solution based on the new generation of NB-IoT technology.

On April 25, 2017, the Global Mobile Communications Equipment Suppliers Association released data that there are currently only four NB-IoT commercial networks in the world. But it also pointed out that at least 18 operators in 13 countries are planning to deploy or are testing 40 NB-IoT networks.

In May 2017, SoftBank cooperated with Ericsson to fully deploy Cat-M1 and NB-IoT networks in Japan, with a view to taking the lead in launching commercial cellular IoT services in Japan.

In May 2017, China Unicom Shanghai announced that it would complete the commercial deployment of NB-IoT in Shanghai by the end of May. In the first half of 2016, Shanghai Unicom built the world's first pre NB-IoT large-scale continuous coverage area - Shanghai International Tourism Resort, and jointly released a smart parking solution with NB-IoT technology together with Huawei.

In May 2017, Huawei's NB-IoT chip Boudica 120 will be shipped on a large scale by the end of June.