A Survey on Technologies and Challenges of LPWA for Narrowband IoT

With the dawn of 5G era worldwide NB-IoT has become an evolving technology of cellular 5G wireless communications. In particular, the mobile operators should ensure secured services and connectivity with higher range of IoT solutions. The existing cellular standards provide poor power-saving capabilities which lead to unsuitable battery requirements. Poor coverage is a major drawback for the connected things in remote areas. To satisfy the demand and to support the 5G system NB-IoT is deployed. NB-IoT comes under the category of LPWAN designed in 3GPP for wireless network operators. It is a subset of LTE standard with a narrowband of 200 KHz. It meets the challenges of stable and robust connectivity in a virtual network. This paper explains the technical aspects, design deployment, features, challenges, and applications of NB-IoT with a comparison of other technologies.