LoRa and NB-IoT

Gagan Gupta, Darshan Patil

gagan@kth.se, darshan@kth.se
13 October 2016
OUTLINE

● Background

● Motivation

● LoRa

● NB-IoT

● Conclusion
 Background
Radio Access ??
Different Applications have different set
of Requirements
● Cost
● Data Rate
● Latency
● Energy Consumption

IoT- Billion of Connected Devices

● Voice, Multimedia (high data rate) → Legacy cellular

licensed solutions, unlicensed WLAN solutions

● Industrial, commercial, sensors and IoT (low data

rate) → IEEE 802.15.4, LPWA, BT, ZigBee
 Motivation
● IOT devices have requirements of wide area
connectivity for low power and low data rate
devices at economical cost
● Legacy cellular solutions- high throughput,
long range, but high power and costly
● WLAN 802.11 a-n- high throughput, short
range, moderate-high power and cost
● LPWA- Tradeoff between above (Some
technologies like LoRa and NB-IoT)

● LPWA- For applications that require

multi-year batteries and send small
amount of data less frequently
● Also, involving long range
communications with low power
● Applications like Smart meter, seismic
sensors, environmental monitoring,
smart grid etc.
LPWA standards

Reference: Course textbook

● LoRa / LoRaWAN-
○ Set up by industrial
consortia
○ Unlicensed
● NB-IoT- Narrow band IoT
○ Set up by 3gpp
○ licensed
 LoRa ( Long Range)
● LoRa is the proprietary physical layer or
the wireless modulation technique
utilized to create long Range
Communication Link
● Based on chirp spread spectrum
modulation
● A single gateway or base station can
cover entire cities or hundreds of
square kilometers

Chirp Signal
 LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network)

● Star of Stars Topology

● Nodes connect to multiple
gateways.
● No handover needed from
gateway to gateway
● Nodes are asynchronous and
communicate when they have
data to send

● Device Classes-All nodes are not

equal
● Division based on tradeoff between
communication latency versus
battery life time.
● Class A -Battery powered sensors
● Class B- Battery powered actuators
● Class C- Main Powered actuators
LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network)
NB-IoT (Narrow band IoT)

● Technology standardized by the 3GPP standards body

● Narrow band Technology designed for IoT which can be deployed in GSM
and LTE Spectrum
● Also termed as cellular based IoT
● Standardization of NB-IoT completed with Release 13 of 3GPP published
on 22 June 2016
● To be launched in early 2017
NB-IoT (Narrow band IoT)
● Transmission schemes:
○ minimum system bandwidth for
both downlink and uplink - 180
kHz
○ GSM carrier of 200 kHz,
○ 1 PRB (Physical Resource Block)
inside an LTE carrier/ guardband
could be replaced by NB-IoT
carrier.
○ 12 subcarriers of 15 kHz in
downlink using OFDM and 3.75/
15 kHz in uplink using SC-FDMA
○ Various deployment options
❖ Highest modulation scheme used- QPSK
REDUCED
❖ Minimal noise level inside a single narrowband POWER
❖ Receiver does not require to add processing gain to decode &
❖ Simple and inexpensive transceiver design LOW COST
 NB-IoT (Narrow band IoT)
● Physical Channel/ Resource mapping
○ Extensive reuse of current LTE
N/W (Long Term Evolution)
specifications
1 3 ○ Few changes to physical channels
2
4 used in LTE (detailed review)
UE
● Random Access :
1. Preamble
○ *Contention based algorithm
2. Response containing advance
similar to LTE [*Source- A Primer
command and scheduling of the uplink
on 3GPP Narrowband Internet of
resources for the UE to use
Things (NB-IoT)]
3. Identity to the network
4. Contention resolution message

● To enable low-complexity UE implementation, NB-IoT allows only one HARQ

process in both downlink and uplink, and allows longer UE decoding time

● Asynchronous, adaptive HARQ procedure is adopted to support scheduling

flexibility.
 NB-IoT (Narrow band IoT)

● Time acquisition and synchronization

○ Critical- (Low cost Oscillators, deployment style introduces additional frequency
offsets)
○ Changes to the design of synchronization sequences in LTE
● Various pedagogical estimations and signal processing schemes are considered to estimate
time delay and synchronization in LTE (detailed review and reference for figure)
 NB-IoT (Narrow band IoT)

Source: NB-IoT, Accelerating Cellular IoT, Huawei

 LoRa and NB-IoT overview
Feature LoRa NB-IoT

Licensed/Unlicensed Unlicensed Band Licensed Band

Spectrum

Reuse of Cellular Network No Yes

Development Status Existing Yet to develop

Modulation SS chirp QPSK

Bandwidth 500 Hz - 125 KHz 180 KHz

Data Rate 290 bps- 50 kbps 250 kbps max

Device cost/ complexity 1-5 $ (Ref- LPWA survey) < 5$ per module (Ref-IETF)

Latency and Battery Lifetime > 10 years <10 seconds, >10 years battery
(Ref-IETF)

Type of Standard Proprietary open

 Conclusion

● We have studied -
○ Why?
■ IoT is need of the time.
○ How it can be achieved?
■ LPWA standards like NB-IoT and LoRa were discussed and
compared.
○ What?
■ Is LoRa: Entirely new technology adapted to the need of IoT
platform
■ Is NB-IoT: Use of existing cellular infrastructure
References

NB-IOT:
Maximum-Likelihood Detection for Energy-Efficient Timing Acquisition in NB-IoT
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.02427.pdf

A Primer on 3GPP Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT)

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.04171.pdf

NB-IoT by IETF
https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/96/slides/slides-96-lpwan-7.pdf
Thank You !!