Nb-iot enters 5g standard, universe, open

July 9, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) held the ITU-r wp5d 5g and nb iotconference successfully concluded, 3gp5g technology to meet the requirements of the IMT-2020 5G technology standard. It was officially accepted as the itu imt-2020 5G technology standard. The 3GPP technologies adopted include 3gpp nr+NB-IoT RIT submitted domestically, 3gpp nr rit submitted by a certain country, NR+lte rit and nr rit submitted by 3GPP. This also means that NB-IoT led by the domestic industry chain has been widely recognized and supported by the global industry chain in practice, and has become an important part of 5G.

1.15 g Uniform standard becomes consensus, the era of multiple standards is over

Global unified communication standards help the industry develop collaboratively. The multi-standard system requires suppliers, operators, and vendors to have products compatible with different standards, which will greatly increase the overall cost of the industry. the unification of 5G standards can solve many pain points such as the fragmentation of past standards, the inability to interconnect, and the inability to form sufficient economic scale, thus promoting the prosperity of the communications industry.

1.2 NB-IoT has been incorporated into the 5G international standard, and the IoT industry has weathered the storm

B-IoT (Narrowband IoT) is a technical standard defined by 3GPP standardization organization. It is a narrowband RF technology specifically designed for IoT that can be used widely around the world. It uses licensed frequency bands and can be deployed in three ways: in-band, protected band or independent carrier, coexisting with existing networks.

NB-IoT gradually evolved and was formally included in the 5G standard in July 20, 2014, and narrowband information technology NB M2M was proposed by a certain Wei and Vodafone in May 2014; in September 2015, at the 69th RAN Plenary of 3GPP, "NB-CIoT" and "NB-LTE" were introduced. "In June 2016, NB-IoT was adopted by 3GPP, marking the beginning of NB-IoT commercialization; in July 2020, NB-IoT was formally studied as a 5G standard at the ITU-R WP5D meeting. 5G standard. From 2016, the first time the system completed a standardized construction staff to date, NB-IoT can be developed rapidly and economically within a certain period of four years. Up to now, 71 countries around the world have invested in the construction of 129 mobile things as well as networking, of which NB-IoT network has reached 93.

NB-IoT is a low-power wide area network communication technology, which is widely supported by global mainstream operators and communication equipment manufacturers for its characteristics of "large connection, wide coverage, low power consumption and high security". Currently, there are three representative technologies for LPWA: LoRa, Sigfox and NB IoT. LoRa and SigFox both operate in the unlicensed Sub-1GHz ISM band, while NB-IoT operates in the licensed band. LoRa is a network standard jointly promoted by industry consortia. Users can deploy LoRa networks without relying on operators, with low cost and high autonomy. Sigfox is a technology developed by the French company of the same name. It is in charge of the construction and operation of the core network and deploys networks worldwide; NB-IoT is developed by 3GPP, the most authoritative standards planning organization in the communications industry, and approved by the International Telecommunication Union.

Nb-iot can be the standard for 5g technology due to the irreplaceable advantages of lora and sigfox technologies in the lpwa scenario: (1) the nb-iot bands used by the three operators are evenly distributed across states, and users can only use them through electricity, (2) nb-iot is built on cellular networks with high quality and minimal cleanup risk, and operators or Third-party agents must be licensed to use nb-iot-related services technology and spectrum, security and communication factors, can be deployed directly on gsm, umts or lte networks to reduce deployment costs and smooth upgrades; (3) lora and sigfox have a limited number of transmissions per day for areas without real-time communication requirements, while nb-iot networks do not limit the number of transmissions, the number of messages and relatively high data carrying capacity, applicable to the importance of network transmission stability and real-time intelligence industry.

B-IoT formally included in the 5G standard has the following inevitability:

(1) NB-IoT meets the ITU's vision for 5G. According to 3GPP's previous domestic standardization management plan, the R16 version will be developed to realize all social functions of uRLLC and mMTC. The 79th Plenary Session of 3GPP Wireless Access Network in Chennai, India, in March 2018 made it clear that the R16 version of 5G NR will not be able to analyze and standardize a low-power system wide area IoT use case; furthermore, the R16 version of 5G NR will not be able to analyze and standardize a low-power system wide area IoT use case. In addition, at the 3GPP meeting held in Greece as Athens, companies presented reports on the need for and evaluation of NB-IoT and eMTC sufficient to meet the density of 5G mMTC connectivity networks. From this, it can be seen that low-power wide-area IoT will continue to rely on the evolution of NB-IoT and eMTC for education, and both will jointly take up the important task of cultural support for 5G mMTC scenarios.

Incorporating (2) NB-IoT into 5G standards will greatly reduce the risk of its industrialization. In the next 10 years, 5G may become the mainstream of global mobile communications. NB-IoT has already gained official status in the 5G family, and its lifecycle is synchronized with other 5G technologies, which will provide large-scale IoT access services for 5G mMTC in the long term. For industry chain companies, the longer the term, the longer the fixed investment in the NB-IoT field is guaranteed. From the perspective of industry users, once the network stops running, it will bring huge module or terminal product replacement cost to enterprises, and the past 10 years of operation of NB-IoT will guarantee the long-term connection of their IoT terminals.

(Unified technology evolution to ensure the new requirements of IoT;. Nb-iot and other 5g standards have their own roles to play and cover most communication connectivity scenarios. A single set of 5G standards can meet the diverse and complex connectivity needs of users without duplicating efforts and without fear of incompatible standards. For example, the development of 5g r16 standard considers nb-iot to 5g solutions, such as nb-iot and 5g nr coexistence, nb-iot access to 5g core network, etc.

(4) The exploration of n b-IoT industrial ecology will be a useful reference for 5G ecological construction. nb-IoT industrial ecology will be an integral part of 5G industrial ecology. In recent years, the industrial ecology construction of NB-IoT will lay the foundation for the implementation of 5G regulations and the improvement of industrial ecology. Open lab construction, joint promotion of benchmark cases, joint development of industry standards, and release of technical white papers are also important elements of the current industry to promote the construction of 5G ecology in thousands of industries.

(5) NB-IoT has become a pioneer of 5G, accumulating working experience for 5G toB. 5GmMTC will be oriented to the IoT development needs of various vertical management industries, and NB-IoT has been positioned as a communication for things and things since its inception. For example, with the application of NB-IoT, gas engineering companies are not only able to conduct remote meter reading, but also start gas big data analysis and operation based on this, and gas operators form their own new business economic models; white goods companies form a new product design and model of information sharing and time sharing based on NB-IoT. In these social practice teaching process, NB-IoT practitioners we must constantly penetrate into the students' large number of vertical industries in the process of safe production methods business activities, and have a deep reading understanding of vertical industries through digital learning needs. And NB-IoT previously accumulated industry-related experience, enriching the 5G industry innovation practice, can also be said to be the first step to further improve the expansion of 5G to B market.

2. Technology + policy + industry drive, NB-IoT commercial explosion

The biggest resistance to niobium industrialization comes from the 2g network, and the withdrawal of the 2g network will promote the development of niobium industrialization. In addition, nb-iot technology is officially included in the 5g standard, indicating that nb-iot has the ability to smoothly transition to 5g. Operators, equipment manufacturers, chip manufacturers, and vertical industries will accelerate the development of technology and industrialization, providing a solid guarantee for the future development of nb-iot technology.

2.1 Withdrawal event catalyzed, NB-IoT accesses 2G market

From the perspective of international economic market development, 2G network shutdown has long been a common consensus, and after 2017, many local operation service providers have announced the withdrawal time of 2G/3G. In terms of the domestic market, the three major operators have not started the work of 2G/3G network frequency clearance and decommissioning since before 2018: (1) Domestic Unicom announced formally on its official microblog in April 2018 that it will promote 2G network frequency reduction in an orderly and effective manner. It is expected that the process of shutting down our entire 2G network system will be basically completed by the end of 2019; (2) domestic research telecom began to re-farm the 800M Hz band technology covering 2G/3G in 2017, and issued new regulations in October 2018 that students will stop the entry of 2G and 3G mobile smart terminal devices; (3) domestic for mobile in 2018 issued the "5G Terminal sales product management guidelines", said they no longer use the requirements as well as terminals to provide support TD-SCDMA; in the mobile learning program construction department about the 2020 NB-IoT network culture construction project scale of internal staff notice, also clear issues proposed education group will stop adding 2G IoT platform users by the end of 2020. According to the 5G IoT related industry innovation alliance relationship data analysis shows that although the switch of China's communication system is not a quick fix, the number of 2G terminal customers after 2019 keeps entering the environment downward channel.

NB-IoT occupies the 2G market and gradually replaces it. The biggest resistance to the industrialization of NB-IoT has always come from the 2G network. After more than a decade of development in China, 2G has built the highest quality network in the world with wide and deep coverage, which can ensure users' access anytime and anywhere, good industrial ecology and low hardware cost. However, from the global carrier market trend, it is a foregone conclusion that carriers will close 2G networks. With 2G network communication out of the historical stage, hundreds of millions of connected devices need new solutions to fill the gap. According to the distribution chart of cellular IoT connections, future low-rate, high-latency, wide-coverage application scenarios account for 60% of IoT connections. Such as sensors, meters, smart parking, logistics and transportation, smart buildings, etc. High-bandwidth, low-latency 4G and 5G networks account for only 10% of the total connections. Mainly used in video surveillance, digital medical, vehicle navigation and other services with high real-time requirements, the remaining 30% scenarios are low to medium speed IoT devices. It is mainly used for POS, smart home, lockers and other high frequency scenarios with low real-time requirements. It can be seen that NB-IoT mainly targets 60% of low-rate wide coverage scenarios, undertakes 2G market and gradually replaces 2G market.

Compared with 2g network, nb-iot network coverage is improved and power consumption and cost are reduced. nb-iot has low speed and delay up to 10s, which is suitable for low-power devices with low mobility support, automatic alarm and simple operation. In psm (power saving mode) mode, the average current is only 6.7 ua, increasing the battery life of nb-iot devices for at least 10 years. In the future, the use of nb-iot to replace 2g iot will be actively promoted in various industries, and the number of new connections for nb-iot will grow rapidly. In addition, in order to meet the needs of medium and long-term development, 5g evolved niobium-based silicone oil becomes the first choice for mmtc development.

(1) Enhanced coverage:To enhance signal coverage, NB-IoT introduces data retransmission over the wireless channel. The network sends repeated control and service messages to the terminal, and the terminal improves the quality of data communication by merging repeatedly received data. b-IoT can support up to 2048 downlink retransmissions and 128 uplink retransmissions. Data retransmission can increase signal coverage, but at the same time leads to an increase in time delay, which affects the real-time information transmission. In addition, NB-IoT's uplink and downlink control information and service information are sent within a narrower LTE bandwidth, which enables signal enhancement on a single bit of spectrum, resulting in greater PSD (power spectral density) gain. Compared with GSM, the power spectral density of NB-IoT terminal is improved by 7 dB. Improving the power spectral density is beneficial to the signal demodulation at the receiver side of the network and improves the penetration ability of uplink wireless signals in the air.

(2) Reduced system power consumption: PSM (power saving management mode) and dDRX (discontinuous reception) technologies enable NB-IoT power consumption to be reduced. In PSM mode, the communication information module of the terminal control device is designed to enter an idle life state through a period of working time, it will turn off its signal transmission and reception and the related service functions of the enterprise access layer. PSM is suitable for applications where we have almost no economic downward pressure on data analysis traffic. Cloud application and endpoint interaction, the main study relies on the end user autonomy selective contact with the network environment. In eDRX mode, the end product can intermittently receive signals to achieve the purpose of power saving. Compared with PSM mode, the distribution density of idle state is higher in eDRX, and the response of terminal to paging is more timely, which is suitable for scenarios where downlink data transmission is required.

(3) Cost reduction: The NB-IoT communication protocol stack is designed based on LTE, but the uplink shared channel, physical mixed automatic retransmission request or indication channel of LTE physical layer is discarded, and the terminal can use low-cost dedicated integrated circuits instead of high-cost general-purpose computing chips to realize the simplified functions of the protocol. In addition, in MTC environments with low rate requirements, NB-IoT uses half-duplex communication mode to reduce equipment costs. In the half-duplex mode, the terminal cannot simultaneously transmit and receive