Researchers at the department of Communications and Networking, at, Aalto University, have successfully implemented a prototype for a Narrowband Internet-of-Things system. This is a narrowband version of LTE (Long Term Evolution) system targeting machine-type communications applications with low data rate that requires low module cost, long battery life time and increased coverage.
Researchers have been developing the NB-IoT system with software-defined radio system implemented in the department. This implementation is for the physical layer of the GSM carrier version of NB-IoT. It is among the first NB-IoT standalone mode implementations.
Aalto NB-IoT implementation uses a software-defined radio (SDR) implemented on personal computers and using regular Ubuntu Linux operating system. Aalto's implementation of NB-IoT allows virtualization of the network and providing NB-IoT as a service.
This NB-IoT system was tested in Aalto campus area Otaniemi, Espoo, Finland to transmit temperature, humidity and air pressure sensor information from a sensor node to the base station. NB-IoT can be deployed on re-farmed GSM carriers, guard bands of LTE spectrum or using part of operator's LTE spectrum. It has tested the standalone mode on 630 MHz band, on which it has the permission to use, but the system can be easily configured to 900 MHz GSM.
This was developed with partial support of EIT Digital HII-ACTIVE and Finnish national foundation (TEKES) funded Take-5 projects.
