Undoubtedly, the Internet of Things (IoT) is the next big revolution in the field of wireless communication networks. IoT is an invisible network, which connects the physical world to the virtual world. Seamless Internet connectivity is essential between these two worlds for IoT to become a reality. In this aspect, long-term evolution advanced (LTE-A) is a promising technology, which meets the requirements of IoT. However, an exponential increase in the number of IoT devices will increase the energy consumption at base stations in LTE-A. Therefore, in this letter, we study the downlink energy efficiency aspect of LTE-A in the IoT networks. We propose a power control and resource block allocation scheme called breathing for an IoT network. Simulation results have shown that breathing performs better than the traditional maximum power allocation scheme and greedy power reduction scheme in terms of energy efficiency, system throughput, and system blocking. © 2016 IEEE.