What is NB-Fi | Benefits or Advantages of NB-Fi

This page covers basics of NB-Fi technology and its features. It mentions benefits or advantages of NB-Fi.

What is NB-Fi?

Introduction:
It is one of the LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) technologies used for IoT (Internet Of Things) and M2M applications. The common LPWAN technologies include DASH7, Sigfox, LoRa, LTE-M, Weightless and so on.

NB-Fi (Narrowband Fidelity) solutions have been developed by WAVIoT^TM with headquarter in Russia. The technology is based on open protocol and covers full stack of OSI model from PHY, MAC till application layers. The figure below depicts NB-Fi network architecture.

As shown the system consists of BS (Base Station), end nodes, cloud sever and other NMS systems for billing and network management. All the smart end nodes communicate using NB-Fi signal with BS. The BS communicate with cloud server using ethernet, GPRS or VSAT links.

Image courtesy: https://waviot.com/

Following are the major features of the NB-Fi wireless technology.
• Operating Frequency range : 915 MHz, 868 MHz and other sub-GHz licensed bands
• Coverage range : 10 Km (City) to 30 Km (Countryside)
• Security : 256 bit key using XTEA-2
• Total capacity : 20x10⁵ nodes per BS (Base Station or Gateway)
• Channel width : 100 Hz.
• Modulation scheme : DBPSK
• Typical data rate : 10 to 100 bps
• Topology : Full Duplex, Half Duplex (TDD)

Benefits or advantages of NB-Fi

Following are the benefits or advantages of NB-Fi:
➨It is based on open standard protocol and hence interoperability between various NB-Fi device manufacturers will be easy.
➨It is highly spectral efficient which supports more number of nodes per gateway or BS.
➨It supports longer coverage distance.
➨The system is very sensitive and hence can able to recover data from RF signal below noise floor.
➨Due to use of sub-GHz frequency band makes the system to operate in complex channel scenarios.
➨It offers high level of encryption due to use of 256 bit key for end to end data transfer.
➨The system uses AI (Artifical Intelligence) and machine learning algorithms for self-management and other monitoring purposes such as nearby co-channel RF energy measurements etc.
➨The signal offers high level of penetration through concrete walls and basements.
➨The end nodes will have longer life time (approx. 10+ years).
➨It uses SDR (Software Defined Radio) technology and hence firmware can be easily downloaded for radio configurations on hardware.

Apart from the advantages of NB-Fi, there are some of the limitations or drawbacks of the technology. The some of these can be lower speed of data communication, higher latency atc. Apart from this, NB-Fi is considered to be ideal for long range communication with longer life span of the end nodes used in the NB-Fi network.

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