Guest Editorial Special Issue on Theories and Applications of NB-IoT

Recently, demands for low-power wide-area (LPWA) machine-type communications have increased dramatically. It is expected that LPWA connections will reach 2 billion in 2020, exceeding the number of traditional cellular users. Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT), a new radio access technology, has been released by the Third Generation Partnership Project for such demands. NB-IoT supports super coverage extension, massive number of connections and long user lifetime with low power cost and low device complexity. With such prominent features, NB-IoT has become one of the dominating technologies in LPWA networks, applicable to a large range of IoT application scenarios such as smart meter, smart parking, smart home, smart tracking, e-health, etc. However, NB-loT is still in its infancy, needing deep theoretical investigation of modeling and optimizing system performance. Also, emerging applications that can be enabled by NB-loT and implementation challenges therein need further exploration.