Narrowband IoT Device Energy Consumption Characterization and Optimizations

Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) is a new and attractive low power wide area cellular technology for low-capability and low-cost IoT devices, that is starting to see real-world deployments. NB-IoT devices are expected to operate unattended, potentially in inaccessible and signal-challenged locations, for at least 10 years on a single battery charge, making the NB-IoT device energy consumption significantly important. Despite the importance of their function, the communication protocols have largely been copied from older generations of cellular networks to preserve interoperability, without considering their specific characteristics and needs. In this paper, we perform a detailed energy consumption analysis for NB-IoT devices, that we use as a basis to develop an energy consumption model for realistic energy consumption assessment. Finally, we take the insights from our analysis and propose optimizations to significantly reduce the energy consumption of NB-IoT devices in different traffic conditions. These optimizations are also complementary to current 3GPP optimizations towards the 10-year battery goal, and assess their performance.