Lite NB-IoT Simulator for Uplink Layer

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a new paradigm that gives rise to Low Power Wide Area Networks (LP-WAN). Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a particular network architecture built on the legacy of LTE that is most suitable for IoT applications. In this paper, we present our work towards the implementation of a protocol simulator for NB-IoT communications. A summary of the NB-IoT physical layer is presented, deepening on the description of the uplink channel and ending with a description of the uplink scheduling process. As an application of our toolbox, we present NB-IoT uplink block error rate (BLER) curves traced via link layer simulations and derive the optimal link adaptation for an Additive White Gaussian Noise channel.