Experimental Performance Analysis of MQTT and CoAP Protocol Usage for NB-IoT Smart Meter

The low power wide area network functionality of Narrow Band-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) makes it the most attractive communication technology for IoT applications. The use of existing Long-Term Evolution infrastructure, licensed frequency bands, extended coverage, a huge number of device connections, low power consumption, and limited device cost makes NB-IoT a superior communication technology for evolving IoT applications. Owing to these potential factors, a large-scale implementation of NB-IoT communication in an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is also growing rapidly. Different messaging protocols are implemented in NB-IoT smart meters for communication and data transmissions. In this paper, an experimental performance analysis between Message Queue Telemetry Transport and Constraint Application Protocol usage impacted on NB-IoT smart meter’s performances is investigated. Specifically, signal quality, network registration, and packet losses of SIM7020E modem for the NB-IoT smart meter is studied in various environments, including indoor, outdoor, and inside a polycarbonate box installed in the building basement. The area selection for the NB-IoT smart meter deployment is also analyzed through the packet loss result and signal strength requirement.