What are the advantages of NB-IoT?

NB-IoT (Narrow Band Internet of Things) is a cellular-based narrowband Internet of Things, which is mainly used in IoT application scenarios with small data volume and low speed, and is a breakthrough technology to realize the Internet of Everything. So why does NB-IoT appear, and what are the advantages of NB-IoT?

One of the foundations for the realization of "Internet of Everything" lies in the transmission of data. Different IoT services have different requirements for data transmission capability and real-time performance.

Depending on the transmission rate, IoT services can be differentiated into high, medium and low speeds:

• High-speed services: 3G, 4G, and 5G technologies are mainly used, such as in-vehicle IoT devices and surveillance cameras, and corresponding service characteristics require real-time data transmission;

 • Medium-rate services: mainly use GPRS technology, such as lockers in residential quarters or supermarkets, which are frequently used but not used in real time, and require far less network transmission speed than high-rate services;

• Low-rate business: The industry has classified the low-rate business market as the LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) market, that is, low-power wide area network. At present, there is no corresponding cellular technology. In most cases, GPRS technology is used to support it, which brings about the problems of high cost and low popularity of low-speed services.

That is to say, the current low-speed business market needs to be developed urgently, and the low-speed business market is actually the largest market, such as fire extinguishers in buildings and various monitors used in scientific research. The frequency of such equipment in life is very low. But the aggregated total is considerable, and the data is collected for a variety of purposes, such as improving the configuration of city equipment.

NB-IoT is a new narrowband cellular communication LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) technology that can help us solve this problem.