NB-IoT Preamble Signal: A Survey

The Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a cellular IoT communication technology to address the IoT use cases where the smart devices can establish a connection with the network using Random Access (RA) process. The RA process begins with sending a preamble signal in uplink direction. In this paper, we explain about this signal and discuss the effect of wireless channel on the preamble signal. We model the preamble signal at the transmitter side as well as the receiver side. We also classify the research work performed on this signal to four different clusters and consequently explain the methods and techniques utilized in each cluster.