IEEE 5G World Forum (WF-5G)

Saint Joseph University of Beirut

Abstract

Along with the evolution towards 5G, massive machine-type communications (mMTC) are expected to play a prominent role in the Internet of Things. mMTC is about connecting a massive number of low-power devices over very large areas, with low data rates. As recently standardized by 3GPP, NB-IoT largely fulfills the 5G mMTC requirements by adapting and leveraging the existing LTE technology.

In this tutorial, we present recent advances in cellular IoT technologies with focus on NB-IoT. We analyze the link level and system level design aspects. We further focus on NB-IoT link budget analysis and radio network dimensioning. Precisely, we present best practices in the network design and deployment of NB-IoT. Acquiring such best practices is of paramount importance for the engineering and optimization of cellular IoT technologies. We also provide a comparative scientific analysis of NB-IoT and concurrent technologies such as LoRaWAN and evaluate their performance in terms of coverage and capacity. Finally, we cover the research directions and scientific challenges particularly for radio resource management in NB-IoT.

Speakers

Samer Lahoud, ESIB, Saint Joseph University of Beirut, Lebanon, samer.lahoud@usj.edu.lb Samer Lahoud is an Associate Professor at the Saint-Joseph University of Beirut where he lectures computer networking courses at the Faculty of Engineering (ESIB). His research activities focus on routing and resource allocation algorithms for wired and wireless communication networks. Mr. Lahoud received the Ph.D. degree in communication networks from Telecom Bretagne, Rennes, in 2006. After his Ph.D. degree, he spent one year at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs Europe. From 2007 to 2016, he was with the University of Rennes 1 and with IRISA Rennes as an Associate Professor.

Melhem El Helou, ESIB, Saint Joseph University of Beirut, Lebanon, melhem.helou@usj.edu.lb Melhem El Helou received the engineer’s degree and master’s degree in telecommunications and networking engineering from the Ecole Supérieure d’Ingénieurs de Beyrouth (ESIB), Faculty of Engineering at the Saint Joseph University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon, in 2009 and 2010, respectively and the Ph.D. degree in computer and telecommunications engineering from IRISA Research Institute, University of Rennes 1, Rennes, France and Saint Joseph University of Beirut, in 2014. He joined ESIB in September 2013 where he is currently an Assistant Professor (fr: Maître de conférences). His research interests include wireless networking, Internet of Things, and quality of service.