Reducing cyclic prefix overhead based on symbol repetition in NB-IoT-based maritime communication

With the increasing maritime activities, a great demand of wide-area maritime digital data services is needed. Therefore, Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) that can provide wide coverage has been expected as an application for maritime communication networks (MCNS). In this paper, we aim to enhance the spectral efficiency in NB-IoT by reducing the cyclic prefix (CP) overhead in random access signal without causing interference. The key point of the proposed scheme is the symbols transmitted for multiple times repeatedly in NB-IoT. Specifically, all CP are removed and multi-path fading effect is eliminated by using a repeated symbol to cover the disturbed symbol to construct a circular convolution structure of the channel with the same effect as adding CP. In addition, a single-tap equalization is still appropriate. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, simulation results are carried out with respect to the bit error ratio (BER).