Aalto NB-IoT Prototype System

Narrowband-Internet of Things or Narrowband-IoT is a recent Low Power Wide Area Network radio technology standard. It enables a wide range of devices and services to be connected using cellular communications bands. It is designed for the Internet of Things (IoT), aiming to connect a massive number of ‘machines’ or ‘things’ and focusing on indoor coverage, low cost, and long battery life.

At Aalto University, department of communications and networking, we have implemented the stand alone version of the Narrowband IoT base station and user equipment. Our implementation follows the cloud radio access network architecture. We have implemented all the base band processing with C++ and run the software in a standard Linux computer or container. The fronthaul link between the base band unit and remote radio head is Gigabit Ethernet. As remote radio unit, we use USRP software defined radios that only performs the A/D and D/A conversions. All signal processing algorithms are done at the PC side.

The work was conducted in close collaboration with Ericsson Finland in an EIT Digital High Impact Initiative – ACTIVE and in a Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation (TEKES) project ‘Take-5’. We gratefully acknowledge their support.

Thanks to Ericsson, our researchers were able to follow the progress of the standardization in real-time as it progressed.With the courtesy of the mobile network operator DNA. We have been able to test our system on re-farmed GSM band.

Our Software radio base implementation of Narrowband IoT is opening up possibilities for completely new use cases. For instance, we can think of femto cell type of operation with local break out. The narrowband IoT base station could also be integrated to third party products such as automation systems. This would open up new possibilities for wireless automation, condition monitoring and many other applications.

[josephmalkom]

This is why a professor should never let a telecom technician make a video

[josephmalkom]

what a amazing thing - narrow band IoT ! I am laughing profusely - if it is internet then it is not narrow band ! if is ISM then it is not IoT - please dont mess and confuse people