An Empirical NB-IoT Power Consumption Model for Battery Lifetime Estimation

Abstract

The NB-IoT radio technology is a key enabler of the wireless Internet of Things. A competitive parameter is device battery lifetime, in addition to wide-area coverage and low device cost. In this paper, we present the first publicly available empirical power consumption measurements on two NB-IoT devices. The target is to provide a power consumption model for Internet of Things battery lifetime estimation. The measurement results show that the two devices consume 710-840 mW when transmitting at 23 dBm, due to a power amplifier efficiency of about 37 %. Receiving control and data channels require 210- 240 mW, while the Discontinuous Reception and Power Save Mode sleep states consume 21-23 mW and 14-35 uW, respectively. In general, the power consumption levels are higher than the 3GPP estimates, and we thus estimate the battery lifetime is 21-85 % shorter, with these first generation devices.