Andres Laya

Is the Random Access Channel of LTE and LTE-A Suitable for M2M Communications? A Survey of Alternatives

The 3GPP has raised the need to revisit the design of next generations of cellular networks in order to make them capable and efficient to provide M2M services. One of the key challenges that has been identified is the need to enhance the operation of the random access channel of LTE and LTE-A. The current mechanism to request access to the system is known to suffer from congestion and overloading in the presence of a huge number of devices. For this reason, different research groups around the globe are working towards the design of more efficient ways of managing the access to these networks in such circumstances. This paper aims to provide a survey of the alternatives that have been proposed over the last years to improve the operation of the random access channel of LTE and LTE-A. A comprehensive discussion of the different alternatives is provided, identifying strengths and weaknesses of each one of them, while drawing future trends to steer the efforts over the same shooting line. In addition, while existing literature has been focused on the performance in terms of delay, the energy efficiency of the access mechanism of LTE will play a key role in the deployment of M2M networks. For this reason, a comprehensive performance evaluation of the energy efficiency of the random access mechanism of LTE is provided in this paper. The aim of this computer-based simulation study is to set a baseline performance upon which new and more energy-efficient mechanisms can be designed in the near future.

Machine-type communications: current status and future perspectives toward 5G systems

Machine-type communications (MTC) enables a broad range of applications from mission- critical services to massive deployment of autonomous devices. To spread these applications widely, cellular systems are considered as a potential candidate to provide connectivity for MTC devices. The ubiquitous deployment of these systems reduces network installation cost and provides mobility support. However, based on the service functions, there are key challenges that currently hinder the broad use of cellular systems for MTC. This article provides a clear mapping between the main MTC service requirements and their associated challenges. The goal is to develop a comprehensive understanding of these challenges and the potential solutions. This study presents, in part, a roadmap from the current cellular technologies toward fully MTC-capable 5G mobile systems.

Device-to-device communications and small cells: enabling spectrum reuse for dense networks

In the evolution of communication networks, there has always been a need to increase the capacity to cope with the continuous growing demand for data transmission. However, with the arrival of the Internet-of-Things and the commoditization of broadband access through smartphones, tablets, smart-watches, and all types of connecting devices, future networks must be capable of providing higher bandwidth and Quality of Experience, as wellas operating in dense networks with a massive number of simultaneous connections. This high number of connections will be very heterogeneous, spanning from highly-demanding data rate applications to low-complexity and high energy-efficient Machine-to-Machine communications. In such a dense and complex scenario, a more flexible use of spectrum resources is deemed to be the way to meet the growing requirements for data transmission. In particular, this article focuses on Device-to-Device communications and small cell deployments as emerging facilitators of such a demanding and heterogeneous scenario. The pros and cons of both complementary strategies are identified from both a technical and a business point of view, and main standardization activities are discussed. The aim of this article is to identify and describe open challenges and to inspire new areas for research that make viable the next generation of dense networks.

Experimental Study of Bluetooth, ZigBee and IEEE 802.15.4 Technologies on Board High-Speed Trains

This paper studies the feasibility of using low-power wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee in high-speed railway scenarios that involve bidirectional ground-to-train communication. The presented results have been obtained through experimental tests conducted at the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed rail line. A multiplatform communication system has been installed in a high-speed train, circulating at velocities up to 300 km/h, whereas autonomous devices have been disseminated along of the railway path to communicate with the onboard devices. The conclusions drawn from this work will be used as guidelines for the future implementation of autonomous communication platforms for high-speed rail connectivity.

Contention resolution queues for massive machine type communications in LTE

In this paper, we address the challenge of high device density performing simultaneous transmissions by proposing and evaluating a solution to efficiently handle the initial access contention for highly dense LTE networks. We present the implementation of a tree-splitting algorithm in the access procedure of LTE, which is capable to cope with high number of simultaneous arrivals. Based on simulations we show a feasible implementation capable to achieve, under certain network configuration conditions, up to 85% average access delay reduction and 40% reduction on the average energy consumption, while maintaining a consistently low blocking probability, regardless of the number of initial simultaneous access attempts.

The M2M promise, what could make it happen?

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications is a topic of great importance that maintains an ongoing interest in the academic community and in countless industries and services. Technological advances allow the successful deployment of particular solutions but many potential applications still face limitations that prevent them from happening. This paper compares data collected from five implementation cases in order to analyze key issues related to their value proposition and the challenges that currently limit the adoption of M2M communications.

Reducing signaling overload: Flexible capillary admission control for dense MTC over LTE networks

The increasing adoption of Machine-Type Communication (MTC) applications on existing Long Term Evolution (LTE) brings new challenges for traditional signaling mechanism and system capacity. MTC is related to high number of devices; which represents a challenge when performing control and signaling procedures required for getting resource grant, since these processes are inefficient compared to the actual resource usage for small data transmissions. Solutions based on device grouping propose a static grouping approach, which does not perform well in low load scenario. This paper introduces the notion of a flexible admission/connection that can give granular group device control to Core network. With the proposed approach devices can be grouped for a certain period of time under supervision and control of a gateway and they can be ungrouped when there is no need for grouping them together. In this way, a finer control can be achieved on prioritizing certain services and load balancing. Our simulation results demonstrate significant signaling reduction by using this simple scheme compared to conventional connection procedure.

Delay analysis of network architectures for machine-to-machine communications in LTE system

Machine-to-machine communications has emerged to provide autonomic communications for a wide variety of intelligent services and applications. Among different communication technologies available for connecting machines, cellular-based systems have gained more attention as backhaul networks due to ubiquitous coverage and mobility support. The diverse ranges of service requirements as well as machine constraints require adopting different network architectures. This paper reviews three M2M network architectures to integrate machines into the LTE system and analyzes their associated communication delays. It also presents how the appropriate networks can be selected for some machine-to-machine applications, fulfilling their latency constraints.

Multi-radio cooperative retransmission scheme for reliable machine-to-machine multicast services

Mobile Machine-to-Machine (M2M) market is expected to grow dramatically in the upcoming years; predictions agree that the majority of wireless traffic will correspond to this type of communication. M2M devices deployed in proximity to each other might be handled as groups or clusters when sharing the same communication attributes and serving to achieve joint target. Moreover, devices that feature multiple radio interfaces are commonly used nowadays; they can be connected to a cellular access network, e.g., LTE, and simultaneously to a short-range network, also known as capillary network, among surrounding devices, e.g., Wi-Fi and ZigBee. For services such as over-the-air (OTA) firmware update, the same information shall be sent to all the group members over the cellular access network. A Multi-Radio Cooperative Retransmission Scheme for Reliable Multicast Services is presented as a solution to reliably manage reception errors occurred over the cellular network; by carrying out retransmissions over a short-range network it is possible to reduce both the traffic load over the cellular link and the energy consumption in error recovery. Ns-3 simulations were performed with LTE network models to analyze the scheme in terms of energy consumption and prove its usefulness in autonomous, battery driven, devices.

Massive access in the Random Access Channel of LTE for M2M communications: An energy perspective

The capacity limits of the Random Access Channel (RACH) of Long Term Evolution (LTE) for highly dense Machine-to-Machine communications are studied in this paper. We consider the case study when a high number of devices attempt to transmit information to the same base station in a very short period of time. Simulations have been performed considering several parameter configurations related to the random access procedure of LTE. The energy consumption is used as a primordial metric to compare any improvement regarding the random access procedure in future releases, in order to evaluate the impact on the battery lifetime of autonomous devices.