Internet of Things (IoT) technology has attracted much attention in recent years for its potential to alleviate the strain on healthcare systems caused by an aging population and a rise in chronic illness. Standardization is a key issue limiting progress in this area, and thus this paper proposes a standard model for application in future IoT healthcare systems. This survey paper then presents the state-of-the-art research relating to each area of the model, evaluating their strengths, weaknesses, and overall suitability for a wearable IoT healthcare system. Challenges that healthcare IoT faces including security, privacy, wearability, and low-power operation are presented, and recommendations are made for future research directions.

Internet of Things for Smart Healthcare: Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunities

Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the evolutionary directions of the Internet. This paper focuses on the low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation-based IoT services for their irreplaceable functions. In many cases, IoT devices are distributed in remote areas (e.g., desert, ocean, and forest) in some special applications, they are placed in some extreme topography, where are unable to have direct terrestrial network accesses and can only be covered by satellite. Comparing with the traditional geostationary earth orbit (GEO) systems, LEO satellite constellation has the advantages of low propagation delay, small propagation loss and global coverage. Furthermore, revision of existing IoT protocol are necessary to enhance the compatibility of the LEO satellite constellation-based IoT with terrestrial IoT systems. In this paper, we provide an overview of the architecture of the LEO satellite constellation-based IoT including the following topics: LEO satellite constellation structure, efficient spectrum allocation, heterogeneous networks compatibility, and access and routing protocols.

LEO Satellite Constellation for Internet of Things

Low-power wide area networks (LPWANs) constitute a type of networks which is used to connect things to the Internet from a wide variety of sectors. These types of technologies provide the Internet of Things (IoT) devices with the ability to transmit few bytes of data for long ranges, taking into consideration minimum power consumption. In parallel, IoT applications will cover a wide range of human and life needs from smart environments (cities, home, transportation, etc.) to health and quality of life. Among these popular LPWANs technologies, we have identified the unlicensed frequency band (LoRa, DASH7, SigFox, Wi-SUN, etc.), and the licensed frequency band standards (NB-IoT, LTE Cat-M, EC-GSM-IoT, etc.). In general, both types of standards only consider fixed interconnected things, and less attention has been provided to the mobility of the things or devices. In this paper, we address the mobility of the things and the connectivity in each of the three LPWAN standards: LoRaWAN, DASH7, and NB-IoT. In particular, we show how the mobility of things can be achieved when transmitting and receiving data. Then, we provide a general and technical comparison for the three standards. Finally, we illustrate several application scenarios where the mobility is required, and we show how to select the most suited standard. We also discuss the research challenges and perspectives.

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Internet of Mobile Things: Overview of LoRaWAN, DASH7, and NB-IoT in LPWANs Standards and Supported Mobility

The low power wide area network (LPWAN) technologies, which is now embracing a booming era with the development in the Internet of Things (IoT), may offer a brand new solution for current smart grid communications due to their excellent features of low power, long range, and high capacity. The mission-critical smart grid communications require secure and reliable connections between the utilities and the devices with high quality of service (QoS). This is difficult to achieve for unlicensed LPWAN technologies due to the crowded license-free band. Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), as a licensed LPWAN technology, is developed based on the existing long-term evolution specifications and facilities. Thus, it is able to provide cellular-level QoS, and henceforth can be viewed as a promising candidate for smart grid communications. In this paper, we introduce NB-IoT to the smart grid and compare it with the existing representative communication technologies in the context of smart grid communications in terms of data rate, latency, range, etc. The overall requirements of communications in the smart grid from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives are comprehensively investigated and each of them is carefully examined for NB-IoT. We further explore the representative applications in the smart grid and analyze the corresponding feasibility of NB-IoT. Moreover, the performance of NB-IoT in typical scenarios of the smart grid communication environments, such as urban and rural areas, is carefully evaluated via Monte Carlo simulations.

Smart Choice for the Smart Grid: Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT)

The advancement of technologies over years has poised Internet of Things (IoT) to scoop out untapped information and communication technology opportunities. It is anticipated that IoT will handle the gigantic network of billions of devices to deliver plenty of smart services to the users. Undoubtedly, this will make our life more resourceful but at the cost of high energy consumption and carbon footprint. Consequently, there is a high demand for green communication to reduce energy consumption, which requires optimal resource availability and controlled power levels. In contrast to this, IoT devices are constrained in terms of resources—memory, power, and computation. Low power wide area (LPWA) technology is a response to the need for efficient utilization of power resource, as it evinces characteristics such as the capability to proffer low power connectivity to a huge number of devices spread over wide geographical areas at low cost. Various LPWA technologies, such as LoRa and SigFox, exist in the market, offering a proficient solution to the users. However, in order to abstain the need of new infrastructure (like base station) that is required for proprietary technologies, a new cellular-based licensed technology, narrowband IoT (NBIoT), is introduced by 3GPP in Rel-13. This technology presents a good candidature to handle LPWA market because of its characteristics like enhanced indoor coverage, low power consumption, latency insensitivity, and massive connection support towards NBIoT. This survey presents a profound view of IoT and NBIoT, subsuming their technical features, resource allocation, and energy-efficiency techniques and applications. The challenges that hinder the NBIoT path to success are also identified and discussed. In this paper, two novel energy-efficient techniques “zonal thermal pattern analysis” and energy-efficient adaptive health monitoring system have been proposed towards green IoT.

A Survey on Energy Efficient Narrowband Internet of Things (NBIoT): Architecture, Application and Challenges

In 3GPP Rel-13, a narrowband system, named Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT), has been introduced to provide low-cost, low-power, wide-area cellular connectivity for the Internet of Things. This system, based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, supports most LTE functionalities albeit with essential simplifications to reduce device complexity. Further optimizations to increase coverage, reduce overhead and reduce power consumption while increasing capacity have been introduced as well. The design objectives of NB-IoT include low-complexity devices, high coverage, long device battery life, and massive capacity. Latency is relaxed although a delay budget of 10 seconds is the target for exception reports. This paper provides an overview of NB-IoT design, including salient features from the physical and higher layers. Illustrative results with respect to performance objectives are also provided. Finally, NB-IoT enhancements in LTE Rel-14 are briefly outlined.

Overview of narrowband IoT in LTE Rel-13

According to an aspect, there is provided an access node comprising means for performing the following. The access node causes transmitting a paging message to at least one terminal device associated with a data payload. The paging mes-sage comprises, for each terminal device, at least a paging identifier. The access node also causes transmitting a resource allocation grant to at least some of the terminal device. Each resource allocation grant defines an allocation at least for uplink resources. The access node decodes, in response to receiving one or more paging responses on the uplink resources, each paging response based on the one or more pre-defined transport block sizes. At least one paging response is decod-ed based on a pre-defined transport block size of N bits, where N is a positive in-teger with N < 88.

Downlink small data transmission

Apparatus comprising means for performing: performing self-organizing network measurements to generate self-organizing network measurement information; and in response to determining that the apparatus has user data to transmit to a base station, determining whether the self-organizing network measurement information can be accommodated in a message together with the user data.

Apparatus, method and computer program for self-organizing network measurement reporting

Embodiments of the disclosure provide a method, device and computer readable medium for data transmission without RRC connections. According to embodiments of the present disclosure, the segments of data packet may be transmitted without the establishment of the RRC connection by introducing semi-persistent scheduling into the early transmission, thereby saving the consumption of signaling.

Methods, devices and computer readable medium for data transmission without rrc connections

A method, a device and a computer readable medium for resource information for early data transmission are provided. Resource information for initiating EDT between a terminal device and a network device is transmitted in a secured signaling with minimum impacts for the terminal device energy consumption. Only the authorized terminal device obtains the resource. The consumption of signaling is reduced.

Koskinen Jussi-Pekka

Papers

Overview of narrowband IoT in LTE Rel-13

Downlink small data transmission

Apparatus, method and computer program for self-organizing network measurement reporting

Methods, devices and computer readable medium for data transmission without rrc connections

Methods, devices and computer readable medium for resource information for early data transmission