  The introduction of Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) as a cellular IoT
technology aims to support massive Machine-Type Communications applications.
These applications are characterized by massive connections from a large number
of low-complexity and low-power devices. One of the goals of NB-IoT is to
improve coverage extension beyond existing cellular technologies. In order to
do that, NB-IoT introduces transmission repetitions and different bandwidth
allocation configurations in uplink. These new transmission approaches yield
many transmission options in uplink. In this paper, we propose analytical
expressions that describe the influence of these new approaches in the
transmission. Our analysis is based on the Shannon theorem. The transmission is
studied in terms of the required Signal to Noise Ratio, bandwidth utilization,
and energy per transmitted bit. Additionally, we propose an uplink link
adaptation algorithm that contemplates these new transmission approaches. The
conducted evaluation summarizes the influence of these approaches. Furthermore,
we present the resulting uplink link adaptation from our proposed algorithm
sweeping the device's coverage.
