NB-IoT micro-operator for smart campus:performance and lessons learned in 5GTN

Abstract In recent years, many new radio-based connectivity solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT) have been proposed. At the same time, development towards the 6G has brought on the stage the new business concepts. One of them is the concept of a micro-operator and implies the local entities to act as the telecom infrastructure owner and provider in their premises. In the current paper, we discuss the deployment and report the practical performance of a single-cell NB-IoT deployed as a part of the 5G Test Network (5GTN) and controlled by a smart-campus micro-operator. The practical measurements reported in the paper have been carried in the University of Oulu within a huge interconnected indoor environment with the total floor area of 188 600 m^{2}$. Our results demonstrate that the NB-IoT technology is a viable connectivity solution for various non-critical machine-based applications deployed indoors, highlight the practical performance of this technology, and reveal some practical specifics and challenges of acting as an IoT micro-operator