Cellular-based machine-to-machine: overload control

Abstract

One of the most important problems posed by cellular-based machine type communications is congestion. Congestion concerns all the parts of the network, both the radio and the core network impacting both the user data plane and the control plane. In this article, we address the problem of congestion in machine type communications. We propose a congestion-aware admission control solution that selectively rejects signaling messages from MTC devices at the radio access network following a probability that is set based on a proportional integrative derivative controller reflecting the congestion level of a relevant core network node. We evaluate the performance of our proposed solution using computer simulations. The obtained results are encouraging. In fact, we succeed in reducing the amount of signaling while maintaining a target utilization ratio of resources in the core network.