  Narrow-band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a low-power wide-area network
(LPWAN) method that was first launched by the 3rd generation partnership
project (3GPP) Rel- 13 with the purpose of enabling low-cost, low-power and
wide-area cellular connection for the Internet of Things (IoT). As the demand
for over-the-air services grows and with the number of linked wireless devices
reaching 100 billion, wireless spectrum is becoming scarce, necessitating
creative techniques that can increase the number of connected devices within a
restricted spectral resource in order to satisfy service needs. Consequently,
it is vital that academics develop efficient solutions to fulfill the quality
of service (QoS) criteria of the NB-IoT in the context of 5th generation (5G)
and beyond. This study paves the way for 5G networks and beyond to have
increased capacity and data rate for NB-IoT. Whereas, this article suggests a
method for increasing the number of connected devices by using a technique
known as symbol time compression (STC). The suggested method compresses the
occupied bandwidth of each device without increasing complexity, losing data
throughput or bit error rate (BER) performance. The STC approach is proposed in
the literature to work with the conventional orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing (OFDM) to reduce bandwidth usage by 50% and improve the
peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). Specifically, An STC-based method is
proposed that exploits the unused bandwidth to double the number of connected
devices while keeping system performance and complexity. Furthermore, the
{\mu}-law companding technique is leveraged to reduce the PAPR of the
transmitted signals. The obtained simulation results reveal that the proposed
approach using the {\mu}-law companding technique increases the transmitted
data by twice and reduces the PAPR by 3.22 dB while maintaining the same
complexity and BER.
