Problems with Massive Access in LTE-Advanced Networks with Machine-to-Machine Communications in Highly Dense Environments

Abstract

Standardizing wireless systems called "Machine-to-Machine" (M2M) is making it possible to connect machines everywhere without the need for human intervention. The impact that these machine-type communications (MTC) will have on the existing human-type communications (HTC) is a natural concern for cellular operators and service providers. It is of the utmost importance to ensure that current voice and data traffic is not compromised, given the exponential growth of MTC traffic. In order to reduce human customer churn as much as possible, the limits of MTC and HTC traffic coexisting in LTE-A networks are investigated in this paper. In order to guarantee the viability of M2M operations, we demonstrate that, with proper design, the outage probability of HTC is only slightly affected, and that the duty cycle and access delay of MTC are reasonably bounded.