Measurement-Based Optimization of Cell Selection in NB-IoT Networks

Narrowband-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is an emerging cellular communication technology designed for lowpower wide-area applications. Cell selection determines the channel of user device and hence is an important issue in cellular networks. In this article, we make the first attempt to examine and optimize the cell selection in NB-IoT networks by field measurement. We conduct measurements at 30 different locations which involve five typical application scenarios of NB-IoT. Two kinds of NB-IoT modules and two network operators are also involved in the measurements. We find four potential issues on the cell selection of the User Equipment (UE) through the measurements. We propose an adaptive cell selection approach to optimize the cell selection of UE. The simulation test based on real-world measurement data shows that the cell selected by the adaptive approach can improve the coverage level and reduce the power consumption for UE.