Comparison of power consumption between narrowband-internet of things (NB-IOT) and category 1 (CAT1) lte devices in real-life scenarios

Years ago, cellular communication technology, which initially allowed people to make calls, has evolved over time to become a tool through which we can connect to the global internet. The concept of the internet has not only revolutionized human communication but also led to the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), where all imaginable objects can connect to the internet for information transfer or control. The growth of IoT has created a need for cellular communication to provide services within the IoT category. As a result, IoT-focused 4G categories different from those used in our phones, such as NB-IoT, LTE-M, and CAT1bis, have been introduced. Today, NB-IoT stands out for its low power consumption, and CAT1bis is notable for its fast data transfer speeds. Both are widely used cellular IoT categories. However, it remains unclear which technology should be used for which IoT product. The most significant factor contributing to this confusion is whether CAT1bis, known for its faster data transfer compared to NB-IoT, can achieve lower power consumption performance than NB-IoT as the data size increases. This study aims to determine which category, NB-IoT or CAT1bis, performs better in terms of power consumption for data transfers ranging from 100 bytes to 100 kilobytes. Initially, the study provides theoretical results, followed by real-life tests to verify the accuracy of these theoretical measurements. The power consumption performance difference between the two categories for data sizes between 100 bytes and 100KB is demonstrated. During the tests, one NB-IoT and one CAT1bis supported module from SIMCom were used. Initially, a theoretical power consumption calculation was derived from the catalog data of these modules. To increase the accuracy of the theoretical calculation, real-life tests were conducted. In the real-life tests, seven different data sizes ranging from 100 bytes to 100 KB were selected for each module, and their power consumption was measured while the modules transmitted each data size to a TCP server. Each test was repeated 10 times for the selected seven different sizes, and the average was taken. Simultaneously, the time it took for the modules to send this data, regardless of their supported network speeds, was measured, and the network latency times were recorded for each module and each data size. Finally, the power consumption and network latency times were interpolated into a function, which increased the accuracy of the theoretical calculation. The results revealed that the NB-IoT category provided lower power consumption when transferring data sizes of 53 KB or less.