Co-Existence of NB-IoT and Radar in Shared Spectrum: An Experimental Study

The 3GPP Release-13 has introduced a narrowband system, namely Narrowband Internet of Things (NB- IoT), to provide low-power, wide-area cellular connectivity for the Internet of Things. NB-IoT uses a design similar to Long Term Evolution (LTE), but it makes essential modifications for reducing the device complexity. NB-IoT is optimized for machine type communications, and it aims to increase coverage, reduce overhead and reduce power consumption while increasing capacity. In this paper, we present our testbed- based experimental study on the operation of NB- IoT systems in the presence of pulsed radar signals. We leverage results from our experiments in providing a comprehensive analysis on the impact of coverage and capacity of a NB-IoT base- station when it shares an uplink channel with S- band pulsed radars. Our results indicate that the NB-IoT cell coverage is affected in the presence of radar interference.