New 3GPP Standard for IoT

A major milestone was achieved in the Third-Generation Partnership Project's (3GPP's) Radio Access Network Plenary Meeting 69 with the decision to standardize the narrowband (NB) Internet of Things (IoT), a new NB radio technology to address the requirements of the IoT. The new technology will provide improved indoor coverage, support of a massive number of low-throughput devices, low delay sensitivity, ultralow device cost, low device power consumption, and optimized network architecture. The technology can be deployed in-band, utilizing resource blocks within a normal long-term evolution (LTE) carrier, or in the unused resource blocks within an LTE carrier's guard-band, or stand alone for deployments in dedicated spectrum. The NB-IoT is also particularly suitable for the refarming of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) channels. © 2016 IEEE.