Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a wireless communication technology that enables a wide range of applications, from smart cities to industrial automation. As a part of the 5G extension, NB-IoT promises to connect billions of devices with low-power and low-cost requirements. However, with the advent of quantum computers, the incoming NB-IoT era is already under threat by these devices, which might break the conventional cryptographic algorithms that can be adapted to secure NB-IoT devices on large scale. In this context, we investigate the feasibility of using post-quantum key exchange and signature algorithms for securing NB-IoT applications. We develop a realistic ns-3 environment to represent the characteristics of NB-IoT networks and analyze the usage of post-quantum algorithms to secure communication. Our findings suggest that using NIST-selected post-quantum key-exchange protocol Kyber does not introduce significant overhead, but post-quantum signature schemes can result in impractical latency times and lower throughputs

翻译：窄带物联网（NB-IoT）是一种无线通信技术，可支持从智慧城市到工业自动化等广泛应用。作为5G扩展的一部分，NB-IoT有望以低功耗和低成本连接数十亿设备。然而，随着量子计算机的出现，即将到来的NB-IoT时代已面临此类设备的威胁——它们可能破解适用于大规模保护NB-IoT设备的传统密码算法。在此背景下，我们研究了将后量子密钥交换与签名算法应用于NB-IoT通信安全的可行性。我们构建了真实的ns-3仿真环境以体现NB-IoT网络特性，并分析了后量子算法在通信安全中的使用效果。研究结果表明，采用NIST选定的后量子密钥交换协议Kyber不会带来显著开销，但后量子签名方案可能导致不可接受的延迟时长和较低的吞吐量。