Machine-type Devices Research Articles

The challenges of M2M massive access in wireless cellular networks

The next generation of communication systems, which is commonly referred to as 5G, is expected to support, besides the traditional voice and data services, new communication paradigms, such as Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) services, which involve communication between Machine-Type Devices (MTDs) in a fully automated fashion, thus, without or with minimal human intervention. Although the general requirements of 5G systems are progressively taking shape, the technological issues raised by such a vision are still partially unclear. Nonetheless, general consensus has been reached upon some specific challenges, such as the need for 5G wireless access networks to support massive access by MTDs, as a consequence of the proliferation of M2M services. In this paper, we describe the main challenges raised by the M2M vision, focusing in particular on the problems related to the support of massive MTD access in current cellular communication systems. Then we analyze the most common approaches proposed in the literature to enable the coexistence of conventional and M2M services in the current and next generation of cellular wireless systems. We finally conclude by pointing out the research challenges that require further investigation in order to provide full support to the M2M paradigm.

OpenAirInterface

Driven by the need to cope with exponentially growing mobile data traffic and to support new traffic types from massive numbers of machine-type devices, academia and industry are thinking beyond the current generation of mobile cellular networks to chalk a path towards fifth generation (5G) mobile networks. Several new approaches and technologies are being considered as potential elements making up such a future mobile network, including cloud RANs, application of SDN principles, exploiting new and unused portions of spectrum, use of massive MIMO and full-duplex communications. Research on these technologies requires realistic and flexible experimentation platforms that offer a wide range of experimentation modes from real-world experimentation to controlled and scalable evaluations while at the same time retaining backward compatibility with current generation systems. Towards this end, we present OpenAirInterface (OAI) as a suitably flexible platform. In addition, we discuss the use of OAI in the context of several widely mentioned 5G research directions.

Design of a Scalable Hybrid MAC Protocol for Heterogeneous M2M Networks

A robust and resilient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is crucial for numerous machine-type devices to concurrently access the channel in a Machine-to-Machine (M2M) network. Simplex (reservation or contention based) MAC protocols are studied in most literatures which may not be able to provide a scalable solution for M2M networks with large number of heterogeneous devices. In this paper, a scalable hybrid MAC protocol, which consists of a contention period and a transmission period, is designed for heterogeneous M2M networks. In this protocol, different devices with pre-set priorities (hierarchical contending probabilities) firstly contend the transmission opportunities following the convention based $p$-persistent CSMA mechanism. Only the successful devices will be assigned a time slot for transmission following the reservation based TDMA mechanism. If the devices failed in contention at previous frame, to ensure the fairness among all devices, their contending priorities will be raised by increasing their contending probabilities at the next frame. To balance the tradeoff between the contention and transmission period in each frame, an optimization problem is formulated to maximize the channel utility by finding the key design parameters: the contention duration, initial contending probability and the incremental indicator. Analytical and simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed Hybrid MAC protocol.

Joint Access Control and Subchannel Allocation Scheme for Femtocell-Based M2M Network Using a Truthful Mechanism

A joint access control and subchannel allocation (JACSA) scheme is proposed in this paper for femtocell-based machine-to-machine (M2M) network to provide better communication services. As short-range and cost-beneficial eNodeBs, femtocells can improve indoor coverage and data transmission, and can further be used for M2M communication. There are two challenges for femtocell network, access control and truth-telling. Femtocell machine-type communication devices (FMD) select femtocell access points (FAPs) according to the reported channel capacities, while the true values are private information of each femtocell. Therefore, selfish FAPs have incentive to report larger capacities to win greater opportunity to be selected. To solve the aforementioned two problems, a JACSA scheme based on the Arrow-d'Aspremont-Gerard-Varet (AGV) is proposed both in open access and hybrid access scenarios, and formula derivations are given. We prove that, compared with the optimal subchannel allocation (OSA) scheme, JACSA scheme has the feature of achieving near optimal performances with much lower computational complexity. Furthermore, we compare the allocation results for open access and hybrid access in the proposed JACSA scheme. Finally, simulations are performed, and the results verify the availability of our proposed scheme.

Multiple Beam Selection for Combing M2M Communication Networks and Cellular Networks with Limited Feedback

We study the scenario in which a large number of machine-type communication devices (MTCDs) communicate with each other by utilizing the help of the base station (BS) through some MTCD gateways. We consider an overlay mode of an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) based cellular system using orthogonal beamforming to provide broadband wireless access for the MTCD gateways. In order to avoid the interference with mobile users, the beamforming vectors to the MTCD gateways have to be orthogonal to the channel vectors of mobile users, which become a beamforming constraint for the MTCD gateways. However, with limited feedback of channel state information (CSI) at a BS, the orthogonal beamforming constraints may not be achieved. In such a practical case, conventional feedback schemes are feasible but not efficient due to the orthogonality constraints. In this paper, we propose a novel multiple beam selection (MBS) approach with limited feedback for MTCD gateways by taking into account the previous orthogonality constraints. Simulation results show that the performance improvement of the proposed approach over the conventional ones is generally about 10% when a BS is equipped with an array of 6 elements.

Multilayer Orthogonal Beamforming for Priority-Guaranteed Wireless Communications

To utilize the benefits of cellular systems, wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) communications over cellular systems are being widely considered. In order to support efficient spectrum sharing between M2M devices and normal mobile users, in the paper, we propose a multilayer orthogonal beamforming (MOBF) scheme for M2M communications over orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA-) based cellular systems. Using MOBF, each subcarrier in OFDMA systems could be efficiently reused by both normal mobile users and machine-type devices which are organized into multiple virtual layers. The users located in higher layers (e.g., mobile users) are not to be interfered by those in lower layers (e.g., machine devices). To improve the performance, the orthogonal deficiency (OD-) based user selection is carried out, where the intralayer fairness and quasimaximal performance can be guaranteed, simultaneously. Moreover, the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) is investigated to measure the performance lower bound of different layers. It is demonstrated by both theoretical and numerical results that the proposed approach provides a stable SINR performance for each layer, that is, the interference free ability from lower level layers.

Multi-Group Random Access Resource Allocation for M2M Devices in Multicell Systems

The efficient service of a tremendous number of machine-type devices with heterogeneous traffic types may consider simple random access as a solution. For more rigorous analysis of system performance in multicell environments, it is required to consider not only the packet collisions within the same cell but also the interference from other cells. This letter analyzes signal-to-interference-ratio distributions and derives efficient resource allocation schemes for spatial multi-group random access in multicell systems, using the Poisson point process model.