NB-IoT and LTE CAT M1

RF field measurements for CIoT (Cellular IoT)

Keysight Network Testing
December 12th 2017

Alex Chua
Agenda © 2017 Keysight Technologies
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Page 2

– Overview of Keysight Network Testing Group

– Internet-of-Things and 3GPP IoT Rel 13 Technologies

– Nemo NB-IoT and LTE CAT-M1 Measurement Solutions

• IoT Coverage Analysis (Service, Signal, RACH)
• CIoT Control Plane Payload Transfer
• NB-IoT and Cat-M1 support in Collection Tools
• NB-IoT Collected Metrics (HiSilicon Boudica & Qualcomm chipsets)
• NB-IoT and LTE Cat-M1 support in Data Analytics Tools

– Demo

– Summary
 Cutting-edge Wireless Network Testing and Analysis Solutions

“Nemo products are used by more than 400 mobile operators, network equipment manufacturers, service
contractors and regulatory bodies from over 100 countries worldwide”

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RF Test and measurement products for full wireless network lifecycle

Nemo Handy Nemo Outdoor Nemo FSR1 Nemo Nemo Nemo Nemo Customer Nemo
Walker Air FSR1 Invex II Experience Monitor Autonomous Probe

Network Network Network

Network Rollout
Optimization Benchmarking Monitoring

Nemo Cloud

Control & monitoring

Nemo Xynergy Nemo WindCather Nemo Analyze

Post processing and
Network analytics
DAS / SC NM Drive Geospatial
Test Intelligence

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Internet-of-Things and 3GPP IoT Rel13 Overview

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World of Wireless IoT
Multiple Complementary & Competing Technologies in the Mix

LPWA

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 3GPP Cellular IoT summary
3GPP Rel 12 3GPP Rel 13

MTC Cat 0 LTE Cat-M1 NB-IoT

Heritage LTE LTE Clean-slate
Bandwidth (downlink) 20 MHz 1.4 MHz 180kHz (12 by 15kHz)
Bandwidth (uplink) 20 MHz 1.4 MHz Single-tone (180kHz by 3.75kHz or 15kHz) or multi-tone
(180kHz by 15kHz)
Multiple access (downlink) OFDMA OFDMA OFDMA

Multiple access (uplink) SC-FDMA SC-FDMA Single-tone FDMA or multi-tone SC-FDMA

Modulation (downlink) QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM BPSK, QPSK, optional 16QAM

Modulation (uplink) QPSK, 16QAM QPSK, 16QAM TBC π/4-QPSK, rotated π/2-BPSK, 8PSK optional 16QAM

Duplex mode Full or half-duplex Full or half-duplex Half-duplex

Downlink peak bitrate 1Mbps 1Mbps 250kbps
Uplink peak bitrate 1Mpbs 1Mbps 250kbps(Multi-tone)
20kbps (single-tone)
Latency 10ms-15ms 100ms ~8s
Coverage (link budget) ~141dB ~156dB ~164dB standalone deployment
~149dB in/guard-band deployment
Mobility Full Full Nomadic

Applications Critical IoT: health care, home care, Critical IoT: health care, home care, Massive IoT: smart metering, home security, etc.
traffic SoC, connected car, etc. traffic SoC, connected car, etc.

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Cat M1 Cat M
1.4MHz from 6 x 180kHz
3GPP R13
TAU (Tracking Area Update) timer period
Close to standard LTE including full mobility
UE initiated
TAU Active timer
~ 15dB Coverage enhancements over standard LTE
• Frequency hopping
• PSD (Power Spectral Density) boosting
• TTI bundling or repetition (redundant transmission) Power save mode, UE
t
Sleep DRX (UE checks
• Multi-subframe channel estimation periodically for pages unreachable

Longer TAU period can be tolerated

Power and complexity savings
• Fewer supported transmission modes
• Reduced max Tx power (20dBm power class)
• Reduced measurement reports
• PSM (R12 Power Saving Mode) & eDRX (R13 extended Discontinuous Reception)
t
eDRX energy saved by less frequent checks for
• C-eDRX (Connected mode eDRX 5.12 and 10.24 second cycles) pages. UE can be reachable more quickly than
waiting for next TAU
• I-eDRX (Idle mode eDRX ~44 minute cycles)
Power Saving Mode and eDRX
Deployable in any 6PRB group e.g. of a 20MHz channel
• New M-PDCCH similar to EPDCCH (Physical Dedicated Control Channel)
• UE uses 6 central PRBs for synchronization & PRACH then re-tunes to another 6PRB frequency range
for follow-on control messages
• No support for PDCCH, PCFICH, PHICH

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NB-IoT NB-IoT
3GPP R13 180kHz from 1 x 180kHz

Clean-sheet design though leverages significantly from LTE

Cat M but with nomadic mobility only Control plane and user plane data transmission
• Coverage enhancements (~23dB improvement over standard LTE in
Alternative NB-IoT Control LTE DRB User plane
standalone deployment, ~8dB in in-band and guard-band deployments) Plane data transmission data transmission
• Downlink leveraged from 1 LTE PRB NAS
• Uplink: LTE-like 15kHz subcarrier multi-tone SC-FDMA, single tone IP
RRC
15kHz FDMA or 3.75kHz FDMA
PDCP
• R13 standardization focussing on FDD, TDD could be added later Low overhead IP overhead
RLC
MAC
Power and complexity savings PHY
• RLC-Transparent Mode and simplified RLC-Ack’ Mode only (TBC no
RLC-Unack’ Mode)
• Downlink TBCC (tail biting convolutional code) – easier to decode than New NB channels
LTE turbo-codes Downlink:
• Half-duplex only • NPBCH (physical broadcast channel)
• Control plane (CP) data transmission (inside RRC/NAS messages) as a • NPDSCH (physical downlink shared channel)
lower overhead alternative to full DRB IP user plane (UP) data • NPDCCH (physical downlink control channel),
• NRS (Narrowband Reference Signal)
transmission • NPSS/SSS (primary and secondary synchronization channels)
• C-eDRX (Connected mode eDRX 5.12 and 10.24 second cycles) Uplink:
• I-eDRX (Idle mode eDRX ~3 hour cycles) • NPUSCH (Narrowband Physical Uplink Shared CHannel),
• NPRACH (Narrowband Physical Random Access CHannel),
• DMRS (demodulation reference signal)

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NB-IoT and Cat-M1 180kHz from 12x15kHz

Deployment Options
subcarriers (OFDMA downlink)

LTE 180kHz PRB

(Physical Resource Block)

25x180k=
4.5MHz 6x 180k=
1.08MHz

Typical 5MHz LTE Cat M NB-IoT

5MHz with 25 x 180kHz 1.4MHz with 6 x 180kHz 200kHz from 1 x 180kHz

Cat M in-band NB-IoT in-band

with LTE with LTE

TBC NB-IoT excluded NB-IoT LTE guard NB-IoT in 200kHz GSM NB-IoT in 200kHz GSM
from central 6 PRB band spectrum no guard spectrum with guard

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Announced NB-IoT & Cat-M1 Trials and Deployments June 2017

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2017/06/15/lte-iot-starting-connect-massive-iot-today-thanks-emtc-and-nb-iot

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Nemo NB-IoT and LTE CAT-M1 Measurement Solutions

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CIoT - NB-IoT and LTE Cat-M1
Measurement Use Cases
– IoT value prop to be verified
• Extended coverage
• Battery life
• Network capacity

– Use cases
• Early lab/field testing
• Device/network acceptance
• Benchmarking
• SLA verification/monitoring

Sample report for NB-IoT/LTE-M1

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IoT Coverage Analysis
Service Coverage
Live network LTE-M results, report sample

– Both NB-IoT and LTE Cat-M1 provide extended coverage over regular LTE

– Better coverage comes with the expense of latency and throughput/spectral

efficiency
• Latency increases up to 10s or more, throughput lowers down to
<100bps in extreme low coverage

– The determination of the coverage is not simply a matter of looking at

detected signal strengths and block error rates.

– Coverage must be verified against application level minimum accepted QoS

• Active measurements (ping/FTP/SMS/etc.) needed

– Key Metrics:
• Application performance: Ping RTT, Ping success rate, Application
throughput, L3 payload bytes
• Radio performance: MAC throughput, Modulation, MCS, PRBs, PDSCH
BLER, RSRP, SNR

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 Nemo Analyze sample view, signal coverage statistics

IoT Coverage Analysis

Signal Coverage
– Sufficient signal strength & quality is a prerequisite for good NB-
IoT/LTE-M service coverage

– When deployed in existing LTE site grid, no coverage issues

expected in outdoors (23dB coverage gain over LTE for NB-IoT,
15dB for LTE-M1)
 Focus on deep inbuilding coverage verification

– Metrics: RSRP (dBm), RSRQ(dB), SNR (dB) Nemo Outdoor sample view, signal coverage and quality

– NB-IoT does not support handovers

UE does not measure neighbor cells during active connection
Scanner or idle mode UE best for signal coverage
measurements

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IoT Coverage Analysis
RACH Coverage
– RACH (Random Access Channel) is used by UE to
initiate connection as with LTE

– NB-IoT uses repetition for RACH preambles to extend

the coverage compared to LTE

– Same metrics as with LTE can be used to verify RACH

process

– Testing in low coverage (deep inbuilding) needed for

verification

– Key Metrics: Number of preambles, RACH result,

Access delay

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CIoT Control Plane Payload Transfer
Non-IP Data Delivery
– CIoT supports carrying payload over the control plane signaling
• No overhead of radio bearer and CN resources setup
• Efficient for applications sending small payload sporadically
• Prerequisite for Massive IoT

– Nemo Tools support measurements and analysis of the control plane

payload transfer

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 NB-IoT and Cat-M1 support in Nemo Collection Tools
Nemo Outdoor 8.1.0
– HiSilicon Boudica chipset
• LTE NB-IoT
• Devices used in development:
Quectel BC95 dev kit (bands
5/8/20), Lierda USB device (bands
5/8/20), UBLOX SARA-N211 dev kit
(bands 8/20)
– Qualcomm MDM9206 chipset
• LTE NB-IoT, LTE CAT-M1 and
EGPRS
• Devices used in development :
Qualcomm ref terminal, Quectel
BG96 dev kit, UBLOX SARA-R404M
dev kit (different band variations)
Nemo Outdoor 8.1.1 (4Q 2017)
• PCTEL IBflex/MXflex scanner
support
- Simultaneous LTE/LTE-M/NB-
IoT measurements, RSRP,
UBLOX
RSRQ, CINR, PSS/SSS CINR
Nemo Outdoor 8.2.0 (1Q 2018) Lierda
– PCTEL IBflex/MXflex
• Layer 3 decoding
- MIB (640 ms)
- SIB (2560 ms)
• Blind scan for NB-IoT
– R&S TSME/TSMW scanner support
– New test devices for field testing
– PSM and eDRX forcing with QC
chipset devices, allows testing different
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 Qualcomm MDM9206 Collected Metrics
NB-IoT/Cat M1 Parameters/KPIs (Quectel BG96, UBLOX Sara R404-M)
• Packet technology (NB-IoT) • Serving cell RSRP (every ½ s)
• Operation mode (inband same PCI, inband • Srxlev (S-criteria)
different PCI, guardband, standalone)
• PDSCH BLER
• Band/ Channel number/ DL BW
• RACH information
• Physical cell identity/ Cell ID/ TAC/ C-RNTI
NB-IoT

• MAC layer throughput, block rate,

• MCC/ MNC
• Link adaptation (modulation, MCS, Rank, PRBs)
• MME group ID/ MME code/ M-TMSI
• L3/ RRC signaling messages and decoding
• Service info status
• L3 user data payload (with PP tools)
• RRC state
• UL subcarrier spacing (3.75/5 kHz)
• Nemo Outdoor’s data applications can be used,
• TX power PUSCH (dBm)
like Ping (RTT), FTP, etc.
Cat M1

• Same KPIs as collected on LTE UEs utilizing Qualcomm chipsets

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 HiSilicon Boudica Collected Metrics
NB-IoT Parameters/KPIs (Quectel BC95, Lierda, UBLOX Sara-N211)
• Packet technology (NB-IoT)
• Operation mode (inband same PCI, inband
different PCI, guardband, standalone)
• Band/ Channel number/ DL BW
NB-IoT
• Physical cell identity/ Cell ID/ TAC/ C-RNTI
• MCC/ MNC
• MME group ID/ MME code/ M-TMSI
• Service info status (service received)
• RRC state (idle, connected)
• Serving cell RSSI/ RSRP/ RSRQ/ RS CINR
(every ½ s)
• L3/ RRC signaling messages and decoding
• L3 user data payload (with PP tools)
• UL subcarrier spacing (3.75 kHz or 15 kHz)
• TX power PUSCH (dBm)
• Applications: Ping
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NB-IoT and LTE Cat-M1 support in Nemo Data Analytics Tools

– Available Today
• Nemo Analyze 8.0, Nemo Windcatcher 3.6.3.0
• Support for NB-IoT and Cat-M1 UE logfile analysis of
Nemo Collection tools
- Metrics, report template, playback template

– Jan 2018
• Nemo Xynergy
- Support for UE and scanner NB-IoT and Cat-M1
analysis, metrics, report template UBLOX

– 1Q 2018
• Nemo Analyze 8.10, Nemo Windcatcher 3.6.4.0
- Support for NB-IoT scanner data analysis

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Nemo Outdoor LTE Cat M1
Field Measurements

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NB-IoT Measurements – Nemo Post Processing
RSRP vs Ping RTT

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Summary

– Cellular IoT: Both NB-Iot and LTE Cat-M1 are being deployed worldwide

– Verification of the technology is needed

• Early lab/field testing
- Troubleshooting, understanding the technology
• Service coverage verification
• Device & network benchmarking
• Rollouts/acceptance
• SLA monitoring

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Question and Answers

Thank You!

For further enquiries, please contact: nemo.sales@keysight.com

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