LANDSCAPE STUDY OF NB-IOT TECHNOLOGY
The objective behind establishing technical specifications and conducting declared patent analysis within the ETSI standards framework for specific technologies in 3GPP standardisation is to ensure a methodical progression, smooth integration, and effective assimilation of the technology.
This involves creating a standardised framework for its implementation, encouraging compatibility between various components, and tackling potential intellectual property (IP) challenges.
To find the major contributors involved in NB-IoT, the assignees and their patent family declarations were scrutinized to compute the contribution made by each contributor towards NB-IoT. The individual contributors were given a weightage of 1 while the weightage was equally distributed between partnering contributors i.e., 0.5 each. Based on this contribution calculation, we determined top 10 contributors to NB-IoT.
This strategy enables stakeholders to extract, classify, and comprehend the patent landscape tailored explicitly to NB-IoT, thereby facilitating informed strategic choices concerning innovation, collaborative efforts, and management of intellectual property in the context of 3GPP standardisation.
NB-IoT (Narrowband Internet of Things), as the name suggests, is a new narrowband radio technology developed for the Internet of Things (IoT). It is a massive Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) technology, essentially a type of wireless communication network standard, that is targeted at enabling small-bit-rate communications among connected objects over long distances at low cost and better power consumption. Thus, it is perfectly suitable for IoT applications that only need to transmit tiny amounts of information over a long range.
3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) standardized NB-IoT, a fast-growing 3GPP wireless cellular technology, in 2016 with Release 13. 3GPP is a conglomerate of seven “organizational partners” – ARIB, ATIS, CCSA, ETSI, TSDSI, TTA, and TTC – functioning for the demarcation of telecommunication standards by releasing technical reports and specifications. It is noteworthy that NB-IoT is the first 3GPP technology that has been specifically developed for IoT.
3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) standardized NB-IoT, a fast-growing 3GPP wireless cellular technology, in 2016 with Release 13. 3GPP is a conglomerate of seven “organizational partners” – ARIB, ATIS, CCSA, ETSI, TSDSI, TTA, and TTC – functioning for the demarcation of telecommunication standards by releasing technical reports and specifications. It is noteworthy that NB-IoT is the first 3GPP technology that has been specifically developed for IoT.
The NB-IoT architecture comprises essential components: User Equipment (UEs), evolved NodeBs (eNBs), and NB-IoT gateways. These connect to a core network with key elements such as the Mobility Management Entity (MME), Serving Gateway (SGW), Packet Data Network Gateway (PGW), Home Subscriber Server (HSS), and Network Management System (NMS). This intricate setup facilitates efficient communication and management within the Narrowband IoT framework.
To compute the percentage of patent contributions to NB-IoT, the number of patent contributions made to NB-IoT by each contributor was calculated out of the total number of contributions made to NB-IoT.
Declared Patent Contribution Analysis with respect to technical specifications (TS) documents related to NB-IOT includes assessing the patents that have been officially declared in relation to extracted TS documents. This process involves identifying and understanding the patent landscape associated with a NB-IoT.
By utilizing the 3GPP official website to access relevant technical specifications (TS) associated with NB-IoT, the patent families declared in connection with LTE or 5G standards against this specification are gathered.
