NB-IoT Power-Saving Analysis with Wake-Up Signal and Wake-Up Receiver Implementation

With double digits annual growth rate, Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) has been gaining attraction since inception. This cellular radio access technology suits well for use cases requiring energy efficient operation, low complexity and cost, and deployments of massive number of devices. However, there are power and latency sensitive IoT use cases such as actuators that need a better solution than extended discontinuous reception (eDRX) and Power Saving Mode (PSM) which are limited by the power/latency tradeoff. The Wake-Up Signal (WUS) defined in NB-IoT provides a potential path to achieve energy efficient operation without compromising on latency. Moreover, the WUS/wake-up receiver (WUR) approach can further lower the average power with a potential for large power-saving gains. In this paper, an NB-IoT system prototype with WUS/WUR implementation is presented. Furthermore, an extensive power-saving analysis based on the implementation is performed. To our knowledge, this is the first work that provides power-saving analysis based on NB-IoT WUS/WUR prototype implementation. It offers insight on the relationship between power saving and NB-IoT system parameters under different scenarios.