In-depth Real-World Evaluation of NB-IoT Module Energy Consumption

Abstract

Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a recent addition to the 3GPP standards offering low power wide area networking (LP-WAN) for a massive amount of IoT devices communicating at low data rates in the licensed bands. As the number of deployed NB-IoT devices worldwide increases, the question of energy-efficient real-world NB-IoT device and network operation that would maximize the device battery lifetime becomes crucial for NB-IoT service popularity and adoption. In this paper, we present a detailed energy consumption of an NB-IoT module obtained from a custom-designed NB-IoT platform from which a large amount of high time-resolution data is collected. We perform a detailed energy consumption analysis of each NB-IoT data transfer phase and discuss both the device and the network-side configurations that may affect the module energy consumption in each of the phases. Preliminary results and conclusions are put forth along with the discussion of ongoing and future study plans.