Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) Energy Consumption Calculator

About the tool

This page presents an energy-consumption calculator for Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) devices based on actual measurements. We have profiled the energy consumption for U-Blox SARA N211. Based on the characterization, this calculator allows you to input several parameters (time in cDRX/eDRX/PSM modes, payload size, coverage levels etc.), and computes the energy consumed for such a configuration.

The figure on the left shows the payload exchange sequence of NB-IoT. This tool currently allows for energy calculation only for this sequence at the moment (i.e., cell attach procedure and cell reselection procedures are not considered yet).

As NB-IoT employs several parameters that vary dynamically, it is not possible to accurately determine the energy consumed. For instance, even when the coverage is known, the modulation and coding (MCS) scheme employed determines the number of subframes across which the payload is split. Several approximations are done based on the observations from our measurements.

We will improve the tool with more measurements in the future. Stay tuned! Send in your your feedback to V <dot> Rao <at> tudelft.nl.

The Tool

Input the values and press the “Compute” button.

Cell coverage:

Uplink data size (B):

Downlink data size (B):

cDRX time/Inactive Timer (s):

cDRX duty cycle:

iDRX time/Active Timer (s):

iDRX duty cycle:

Number of payload transmissions per day:

Acknowledgements

Ir. Anand Haridas