Narrowband IoT


Narrowband Internet of Things is a Low Power Wide Area Network radio technology standard developed by 3GPP to enable a wide range of cellular devices and services. The specification was frozen in 3GPP Release 13, in June 2016. Other 3GPP IoT technologies include eMTC and EC-GSM-IoT.
NB-IoT focuses specifically on indoor coverage, low cost, long battery life, and high connection density. NB-IoT uses a subset of the LTE standard, but limits the bandwidth to a single narrow-band of 200kHz. It uses OFDM modulation for downlink communication and SC-FDMA for uplink communications.. IoT applications which require more frequent communications will be better served by NB-IoT, which has no duty cycle limitations operating on the licensed spectrum.
In March 2019, the Global Mobile Suppliers Association announced that over 100 operators have deployed/launched either NB-IoT or LTE-M networks.. This number had risen to 142 deployed/launched networks by September 2019.

3GPP LPWAN standards

Deployments

As of March 2019 GSA had identified:
The 3GPP-compliant LPWA device ecosystem continues to grow. In April 2019, GSA identified 210 devices supporting either Cat-NB1/NB-2 or Cat-M1 – more than double the number in its GAMBoD database at the end of March 2018. This figure had risen a further 50% by September 2019, with a total of 303 devices identified as supporting either Cat-M1, Cat-NB1 or Cat-NB2. Of these, 230 devices support Cat-NB1 and 198 devices support Cat-M1. The split of devices was 60.4% modules, 25.4% asset trackers, and 5.6% routers, with data loggers, femtocells, smart-home devices, and smart watches, USB modems, and vehicle on-board units, making up the balance..
In 2018 first NB-IoT data loggers are other certified devices started to appear. For example released their first CE certified single channel NB-IoT data logger on Tindie in the late 2018.
To integrate NB-IoT into a maker board for IoT developments, SODAQ, a Dutch IoT hardware and software engineering company, crowdfunded an NB-IoT shield on Kickstarter. They then went on to partner with module manufacturer u-blox to create maker boards with NB-IoT and LTE-M integrated.