A Novel Link Adaptation Method for NB-IoT Downlink Control Channel

Abstract

Resource utilization is of high importance in Nar-rowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) due to the large number of users. In this paper, a novel link adaptation method for the downlink control channel (NPDCCH) is proposed. We show that the NPDCCH resource utilization is improved significantly by the proposed link adaptation method compared to the standard system with no link adaptation, while satisfying the required NPDCCH decoding rates in the specifications. The proposed algorithm has very low complexity, and uses the NPDCCH decoding success ratio of the uplink channel which is already calculated in the system.