Abstract
The world is moving toward the future, where every device is wirelessly connected. Many low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN) technologies exist to achieve this goal, but they work under an unlicensed band. 3GPP, in its release 13, introduces a new cellular-based LPWAN technology named narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT or mobile IoT). The application requires low bandwidth and less data transfer, so is more inclined to NB-IoT. This technology offers deep penetration, low power consumption, low complexity, and extended coverage. As the wirelessly connected IoT devices increase in the 5G, we see issues arise in architectural design development and parallel deployment of the NB-IoT system. Thus, it becomes essential for researchers to develop efficient resource-management techniques to resolve these problems. There is a restricted number of existing surveys on such technical enhancement approaches. This paper describes, compares, and discusses the significant research challenges and their solutions. This study first reviews and compares the IoT connecting technologies and discusses the novel NB-IoT cellular technology. Second, enhancing energy efficiency is the leading research problem of NB-IoT technology. For this discussion, appropriate channel-coding schemes and the modulation technique are suggested and analyzed. Further, we discuss the proposed 3GPP releases. Finally, this article identifies the latest opportunities, open research questions, and challenges in the path of growing NB-IoT technology.
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