Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is an LTE variant to support 5G requirements for massive IoT. It has been specifically designed to provide secure, low cost, low power, long-range connectivity to the IoT devices with delay tolerant requirements. With 180 kHz of minimum spectrum requirement, NB-IoT can be deployed in three possible operational modes: i) standalone; ii) in the guard-band of existing LTE/UMTS spectrum; iii) within an existing LTE carrier (inband) by replacing one or more physical resource blocks (PRBs). NB-IoT reuses the LTE design extensively, for example, OFDM in downlink and SC-FDMA in the uplink. In addition, new features like time offset between control and data transmission, repetition for coverage extension are also introduced to ensure the demands of IoT based applications are fulfilled. These design changes help to guarantee the IoT application requirements while ensuring the best co-existence performance with the existing LTE system. This workshop enlightens the fundamental design changes in NB-IoT compared to LTE and provides comprehensive insight into the opportunities and challenges regarding the design and deployment of NB-IoT for massive IoT support. Additionally, the envisioned solutions on how different functionalities should work in harmony, to meet the ambitious connectivity of IoT applications, are described. The discussion is based on proposals suggested in 3GPP NB-IoT standards.

Topics Covered:

• 3GPP Proposed NB-IoT Standard
• Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) Deployment Scenario and Challenges
• Research on Radio Resource Management
• Deployment and Test Network.

Muhammad Mahtab Alam received M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Aalborg University, Denmark, in 2007, and Ph.D. degree from the University of Rennes1 (INRIA Research Center) in 2013, He did his postdoc research in the Qatar Foundation funded project Critical and Rescue Operations using Wearable Wireless Sensor Networks from Qatar Mobility Innovations Center during 2014-2016. In 2016, he has been elected as European Research Area Chair holder in cognitive electronics project and Associate Professor in Thomas Johann Seebeck Department of Electronics, Tallinn University of Technology. In 2018, he has obtained tenure professorship to chair Telia Professorship under the cooperation framework between Telia and Tallinn University of Technology. He has authored and co-authored over 55 research publications. His research interests include self-organized and self-adaptive wireless sensor and body area networks specific to energy efficient communication protocols and accurate energy modeling, Internet-of-things, public safety and critical networks, embedded systems, digital signal processing, and software defined radio. He is a principal investigator of NATO-SPS-G5482 grant as well as Estonian Research Council PUT-Team Grant.