LTE-M and NB-IoT Networks

CoE Training on Traffic engineering and advanced

wireless network planning

Sami TABBANE
30 September -03 October 2019
Bangkok, Thailand

1
 Objectives

• Present the evolution of LTE

towards LTE-M and NB-IoT for IoT
services introduction

2
I. Introduction
II. LTE-M
III. NB-IoT
IV. State of Art

3
I. Introduction

4
 LPWA could account 70% of Cellular IoT Connections in 2020

Market Connections in 2020 Requirements Technology

Segment (Billion)

 CCTV(Camera) l >10Mbps 3G/4G

 In-vehicle Entertainment… 0.2B
 IoT Gateway Backhaul l ~1Mbps
 Wearable 2G/3G/Cat-1
…
0.8B l Low power consumption Cat-M1

 Sensors, Meters l Low Throughput (<100kbps)

 Asset Tracking 2B l Deep Coverage （20dB）
Short Range Tech.
Sigfox, LoRa
 Smart Parking l Low power (10 Years)
NB-IoT
 Smart agriculture … l Low cost (<$5)

LPWA: Low Power Wide Area

5
 C-IoT provides wide WAN coverage

Wifi coverage LTE Coverage

Re-use existing
Cellular
network

Carrier-grade
Reliability
Unlicensed IoT C-IoT Coverage
C-IoT
4G-Like
Security

Roaming • Unlicensed technology is for local coverage

• C-IoT is for wide coverage

6
 Future Oriented Cellular IoT Network: NB-IoT+eMTC+4G

Plan Refarming
2G Low Cost Cellular IoT Refarming STOP GPRS M2M Service Done
(900M)
Plan Refarming
3G Refarming Replace 3G M2M with 4G Done

2005 2016 2020 2025

4G ~10Mbps Cellular IoT

(Including CAT-1)

Future Oriented
eMTC Cellular IoT ~1Mbps Cellular IoT
Technology

NB-IoT ~100kbps Cellular IoT(Full Capability LPWA)

7
 NB-IoT/eMTC Standard’s evolution path to 5G

NB-IoT Technology: NR、

eMBB
Rel-14 Rel-15 LTE to cover high
• TDD NB-IoT band and low
• Positioning：E-CID，OTDOA
• RRM measurement, latency band
• SC-PTM
improvement
• 14dBm output power
• NPRACH enhancement
• Peak throughput improvement
• Differ group QoS
(DL 114kbps/UL 142.5kbps)

mMTC URLLC
eMTC
Technology: NB-IoT,
Rel-14 Rel-15
• Positioning：OTDOA
• SC-PTM
• Capacity improvement: Sub-
• VoLTE coverage improvement
(5dB)
PRB eMTC (45KHz) • mMTC NR will not be considered until
• 64QAM
• 5MHz/20MHz bandwidth
• Low UE output power R17;
(UL 3Mbps/7Mbps；DL
4Mbps/27Mbps) • NB-IoT will be used to cover 5G mMTC
use case before R17

8
 R14: Positioning to simplify device requirement

NB-IoT Tracking Technologies Overview: BaaS Business Model:

GPS + NB-IoT (Connectivity) NB-IoT (OTDOA) Kids tracking (GizmoPal)

TA
TA

TA

• Device cost: ~50USD • Device cost: ~40USD Monthly service fee: 5USD
• Accuracy: 10m • OTDOA: 30~50m
• Latency:30s • Latency:10s Kids tracking (Filip2 Tracker)
• Power consumption: • Power consumption:
0.3mAh/Report 0.2mAh/Report

NB-IoT Tracker

Monthly fee:
USD10 for voice and data

9
 Release-13 3GPP evolutions to address the IoT market

eMTC: LTE enhancements

for MTC, based on Release-
12 (UE Cat 0, new PSM,
power saving mode)
NB-IOT: New radio added
to the LTE platform
optimized for the low end of
the market
EC-GSM-IoT: EGPRS
enhancements in
combination with PSM to
make GSM/EDGE markets
prepared for IoT

10
 Main eMTC, NB-IoT and EC-GSM-IoT features

11
 II. LTE-M

12
 Current status

April May March August November Jun 2017+

2014 2014 2015 2015 2015 2015

Narrowband 3GPP GSMA 3GPP 1st live pre-Full NB-IoT

proposal to ‘Cellular Mobile IoT alignment standard 3GPP Commercial
Connected IoT’ Study created on single NB-IoT Standard rollout
Living Item standard message Released

Evolution of LTE-M

13
Comparison with LTE-M

14
 LTE to LTE-M

3GPP Releases 8 (Cat.4) 8 (Cat. 1) 12 (Cat.0) LTE-M 13 (Cat. 1,4 MHz) LTE-M

Downlink peak rate (Mbps) 150 10 1 1

Uplink peak rate (Mbps) 50 5 1 1
Number of antennas (MIMO) 2 2 1 1
Duplex Mode Full Full Half Half
UE receive bandwidth (MHz) 20 20 20 1.4
UE Transmit power (dBm) 23 23 23 20
Release 12 Release 13

• New category of UE (“Cat-0”): lower • Reduced receive bandwidth to 1.4 MHz

complexity and low cost devices • Lower device power class of 20 dBm
• Half duplex FDD operation allowed • 15dB additional link budget: better coverage
• Single receiver • More energy efficient because of its extended
• Lower data rate requirement (Max: 1 Mbps) discontinuous repetition cycle (eDRX)

15
 Architecture

Present LTE
Architecture

16
 Architecture
Frequency Band Narrow Band
Access LTE-M
Range ~ 11 Km
Throughput ~ 1 Mbps

End Device Email

LTE Access

New
baseband
Customer IT
Software
for LTE-M

End Device
Remote
Monitoring

17
 Spectrum and access

• Licensed Spectrum
• Bandwidth: 700-900 MHz for LTE
• Some resource blocks allocated for IoT on LTE bands

18
 III. NB-IOT

19
 Current status

April May March August November Jun 2017+

2014 2014 2015 2015 2015 2015

Narrowband 3GPP GSMA 3GPP 1st live pre-Full NB-IoT

proposal to ‘Cellular Mobile IoT alignment standard 3GPP Commercial
Connected IoT’ Study created on single NB-IoT Standard rollout
Living Item standard message Released

Evolution of LTE-M

20
Comparison with LTE-M

21
 NB-IoT main features and advantages

Reuses the LTE design extensively:

numerologies, DL OFDMA, UL SC-FDMA, channel
coding, rate matching, interleaving, etc.
June 2016: core specifications completed.
Beginning of 2017: commercial launch of
products and services.
NB-IoT is non backwards compatible version of
LTE targeted for cellular based IoT applications.

22
 Main features
Objectives
• Lower cost than eMTC
• Extended coverage: 164 dB maximum coupling loss or link budget (at
least for standalone) to be compared to GPRS link budget of 144dB and
LTE of 142.7 dB
• Receiver sensitivity = -141 dBm
• Long battery life: 10 years with 5 Watt Hour battery (depending on traffic
and coverage needs)
• Support for massive number of devices: at least 50.000 per cell
Main simplification
• Reduced data rate/bandwidth, mobility support and further protocol
optimizations
3 modes of operation:
• Stand-alone: stand-alone carrier, e.g. spectrum currently used by
GERAN systems as a replacement of one or more GSM carriers
• Guard band: unused resource blocks within a LTE carrier’s guard-band
• In-band: resource blocks within a normal LTE carrier

23
 Main features
Main PHY features:
• Narrow band support of 180 kHz
• Supports two modes for uplink
 Single tone with 15 kHz and/or 3.75 kHz tone spacing
 Multiple tone transmissions with 15 kHz tone spacing
• No support of Turbo code for the downlink
• Single transmission mode of SFBC for PBCH, PDSCH, PDCCH
• New narrowband channels: NPSS, NSSS, NPBCH, NPDCCH, NPDSCH,
NPUSCH, NPRACH
Instantaneous peak rates: 170 kbps (DL) and 250 kbps (UL)
Main radio protocol features:
• Single HARQ process
• Only RLC AM mode with simplified status reporting
• Two PDCP options:
 SRB 0 and 1 only. No AS security (NAS security is used instead). PDCP
operating in TM.
 SRB 0, 1, 2 and one DRB. AS security, which is cached upon RRC connection
release. RRC connection suspend/resume procedures to maintain AS security
context
• Reduced broadcast system information
24
Frame and Slot Structure – NB-IoT – 7 symbols per slot

25
Transmission bandwidth and delays

26
 NB-IoT Channels
Frame structure

Signals: PSS, SSS - RS

Downlink
Broadcast Channel NPBCH
NPDCCH
Dedicated Channels
NPDSCH

Physical
Layer

Frame structure

Signals: Demodulation reference signals (DMRS)

Uplink
Random Access NPRACH
NPUCCH
Dedicated Channels
NPUSCH
Used for data and
HARQ feedback

27
 Physical downlink channels

Maximum Transmission Block Size = 680 bits

Inband mode: 100 to 108 symbols – Standalone/Guard band mode: 152 to 160 symbols

28
 Packets transmission on the PUSCH
Smallest unit to map a transport block: resource unit (RU).
NPUSCH format 1
 3.75 kHz subcarrier spacing, an RU = 1 subcarrier in the frequency range, and 16
slots in the time range (length of 32 ms).
 15 kHz subcarrier spacing 4 options:

 RUs with one subcarrier, BPSK or QPSK,

 Other RUs: QPSK.
NPUSCH format 2
RU always composed of one subcarrier with a length of 4 slots.
 3.75 kHz subcarrier spacing the RU has an 8 ms duration,
 15 kHz subcarrier spacing has an 2 ms duration.
Modulation scheme: BPSK.

UCI: Uplink Control Information

29
Downlink Frame Structure

30
 NB-IoT Repetitions
Consists on repeating the same
transmission several times: 15 kHz subcarrier
spacing.
 Achieve extra coverage (up A transport block test
to 20 dB compared to
GPRS) word (TW) is transmitted
on two RUs
 Each repetition is self-
decodable
 SC is changed for each Each RU is transmitted
transmission to help over 3 subcarriers and 8
combination slots
 Repetitions are ACK-ed just
once
 All channels can use
Repetitions to extend
coverage
DL up to 2048
repetitions
UL up to 128 repetitions

Example: Repetitions used in NB-IoT in NPDCCH and NPDSCH channels

31
 NB-IoT link budget

Link Budget 15kHz 3.75 kHz

(a) Transmit power (dBm) 23 23
(b) Thermal noise (dBm/Hz) -174 -174
(c) Receiver noise figure (dB) 3 3
(d) Occupied channel bandwidth (Hz) 15 000 3 750
(f) Effective noise power (b)+(c)+10log_10(d) (dBm)
(g) Required SINR (dB) -11.8 -5.7
(h) Receiver sensitivity (c)+(g) (dBm) -141 -141
(i) Maximum coupling loss (a)-(h) 164 164

23 dB improvement over LTE

Urban: Deep in-building penetration
Rural: Long rage (10 – 15 km)

32
 Capacity

NB-IoT supports massive IoT capacity with only

one PRB in both UL and DL.
NB-IoT can support multiple carrier operation to get
more IoT capacity.
Sub-PRB UE scheduled bandwidth is introduced in
the uplink, including single-subcarrier NPUSCH.
Based on a traffic model with a split of devices is:
• 80%: MAR (Mobile Autonomous Reporting )
periodic
• 20%: Network Command is MAR periodic.
 NB-IoT with one PRB supports more than 52,500
UEs per cell.

33
 Enhanced DRX for NB-IOT and eMTC

Extended C-DRX and I-DRX operation

• Connected Mode (C-eDRX):
• Extended DRX cycles of 5.12s and 10.24s are
supported
• Idle mode (I-eDRX):
• Extended DRX cycles up to ~44min for eMTC
• Extended DRX cycles up to ~3hr for NB-IOT

34
 Architecture

Frequency Band Ultra Narrow Band HD-FDD

Range ~ 11 Km π/2 BPSK, π/4 QPSK
Throughput ~ 150 Kbps
Class 3 (23 dBm)
Class 5 (20 dBm)
End Device Email

LTE Access

New
baseband
Customer IT
Software
for NB-IoT

End Device
Remote
Monitoring

35
 Spectrum and access
• Designed with a number of deployment options for GSM , WCDMA or LTE
spectrum to achieve spectrum efficiency.
• Use licensed spectrum.
Stand-alone operation
Dedicated spectrum.
Ex.: By re-farming GSM channels

Guard band operation

Based on the unused RB within a LTE
carrier’s guard-band

In-band operation
Using resource blocks within a normal
LTE carrier

36
 LTE-M to NB-IoT

12 (Cat.0) 13(Cat. 1,4 MHz) 13(Cat. 200 KHz)

3GPP Release
LTE-M LTE-M NB-IoT
300 bps to 200
Downlink peak rate 1 Mbps 1 Mbps
kbps
Uplink peak rate 1 Mbps 1 Mbps 144 kbps
Number of antennas 1 1 1
Duplex Mode Half Half Half
UE receive bandwidth 20 MHz 1.4 MHz 200 kHz

UE Transmit power (dBm) 23 20 23

• Reduced throughput based on single PRB operation

• Enables lower processing and less memory on the modules
• 20dB additional link budget  better area coverage

37
 LTE-M Networks in 2019

38
 IV. State of Art

39
 A. Regulation

40
 Frequency bands of SRDs

41
 IoT Bands
2.4 GHz

5 GHz

42
 IOT regulations

Link Activity rate Power

DL 10% 25 mW
UL 1% 500 mW
Arcep France

43 43
 ISM 868MHz Band Plan

Effective radiated power (mW)

Duty cycle < 1% < 0.1% < 0.1% < 0.1% < 1% < 10% < 10% Up to 100%

250 kHz
600 kHz 500 kHz 500 mW
25 mW 25 mW 100 kHz 100 kHz 600 kHz
100 kHz
10 mW 10 mW 25 mW
5 mW 300 kHz, 5 mW
868 868.6 868.7 869.2 869.4 869.65 869.7 868.6 870
Non specific devices MHz

Application-specific (ex. Alarms)

44
 B. Prices

45
 NB-IoT pricing in Deutsche Telekom

1. The NB-IoT Access entry package is available from EUR 199 and
includes a 6-month activation of up to 25 SIM-cards with 500 KB per
SIM pooled in Germany’s NB-IoT network. As a further optional add-on –
a private APN with IPsec-key encryption is available.
2. The NB-IoT Access & Cloud of Things entry package is available from
EUR 299 and additionally includes direct access to Deutsche Telekom’s
Cloud of Things platform for device and data management.

August 2019: New tariffs

7.95 Euro (LPWA) once for 6 MB in the S tariff.
1000 MB including 250 SMS in tariff M costs 16.95 Euro (M2M)
46
 T-Mobile NB-IoT Offer

47
 SK Telecom (South Korea) LoRaWan prices
SK Telecom completed a nationwide LTE-M rollout in March 2017 but only LoRaWAN
services are available.
Price plans for LoRaWAN-based IoT services:
1. 350 won ($0.30) per month per device for a 100kb allocation
2. 2,000 won ($1.77) for a 100MB allocation.
Discounts available for multiple lines, ranging from 2% for those using 500 lines for 10%
for those using 10,000 lines. Excess data will be charged at 0.005 won per 0.5KB.
LoRa plans cost just a tenth of the price of its LTE-based IoT services.

48
 UnaBiz (Singapore) Sigfox prices

Network subscription charges: US$0.75 per device per month, which

comes with a data plan for up to 140 messages per day.
Qualified channel partners who commit to volume can ultimately enjoy
subscription charges from as low as US$0.75 per device per year.
Jonathan Tan, Vice
President Business
Development & Sales,
UnaBiz said, “Sigfox’s
technology is built for
massive deployment and we
are offering ultra-low cost
connectivity to grow exponentially the base of devices that can access the network.
Compared to existing local networks, businesses on our global network can
generate savings of at least 90% off data plan subscription charges.”

49
 AT&T LTE-M services pricing

The new prepaid plans, which target developers and

businesses, include three tiers of data and text
messages:
1. 1 gigabyte of data valid for up to 1 year and 500 text
messages for $25;
2. 3 GB of data valid for up to 1 year and 1,000 text
messages for $60;
3. 5 GB of data valid for up to 2 years and 1,500 text
messages for $100.

50
 Synthesis

Price/End-
Country Operator Technology Conditions (/end-device/month)
device/month

US$ 1.60 85 KB
Germany DT NB-IoT
US$ 2.40 “ + Cloud

South SK US$ 0.30 100 KB

LoRaWAN
Korea Telecom US$ 1.77 100 MB
Singapore UnaBiz Sigfox US$ 0.75 140 messages
US$ 2.08 83 MB and 42 messages
USA AT&T LTE-M US$ 5 250 MB and 84 messages
US$ 4,2 210 MB and 63 messages

51
52
 Quizz – LTE-M and NB-IoT

1) What are the main changes introduced in LTE-M for IoT

services?
2) What are the main changes introduced in NB-IoT for IoT
services?
3) Why regulators define an activity rate in IoT?
4) Is the activity rate applicable to LTE-M and NB-IoT?
5) By which value the link budget is improved in NB-IoT?

53
 Thank you!

54