A Probabilistic Approach to Model SIC Based RACH Mechanism for Machine Type Communications in Cellular Networks

Abstract

In a cellular Internet of Things, burst transmissions from millions of machine type communications (MTC) devices can result in channel congestion. The main bottleneck in such scenario is inefficient random access channel (RACH) mechanism that is used to attach MTC devices to a base station (BS). To address this issue of congestion in RACH mechanism, 3GPP has proposed an extended access barring (3GPP-EAB) mechanism. However, several works indicate that the performance of the 3GPP-EAB mechanism can be further improved. In this work, a successive interference cancellation (SIC) based RACH mechanism is considered to significantly increase the success rate and reduce congestion. In the proposed mechanism, the devices are allowed to transmit repeatedly for a finite number of times in a given cycle, and thereafter, the success rate is improved by applying back-and-forth SIC at the BS. A novel probabilistic approach of the proposed mechanism is presented with all transition and steady-state probabilities. Further, the probability of SIC for a given slot is derived. Through extensive numerical results, it is shown that the proposed mechanism significantly outperforms the existing ones in terms of the success rate. Moreover, to obtain the maximum success rate, the optimum number of devices to be entered in a cycle is also calculated.