NB-IoT for Localization and Target Detection

Abstract

Narrowband internet of things (NB-IoT) is a low power wide area network technology with numerous benefits over conventional technologies. The main advantages of NB-IoT are low-power, low-cost, long battery life, wider deployment, and many more. Along with these advantages, knowledge of the location of the devices for both the indoor and outdoor environments will have an added benefit for NB-IoT applications. The current global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) chipsets will drain the limited available battery and will not be useful for localization in NB-IoT applications while the global positioning system (GPS) applications accuracy is not enough to support NB-IoT applications. For NB-IoT implementation, having low per-unit cost of the devices is an important aspect along with other features mentioned earlier, and hence there is a need to have limited hardware components like processor, battery, and memory. Therefore, the main challenge for enabling a positioning system lies in the proper radio management and balancing of power consumption against the performance of the system. In this chapter, different localization methods, techniques, and metrics are discussed. The choice of each one of these depends on the application requirement. The standardization of NB-IoT is in the process and its current status as per the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specifications are also highlighted.