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fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JIOT.2016.2533541, IEEE Internet of
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A Survey of Traffic Issues in Machine-to-Machine
Communications over LTE
Erfan Soltanmohammadi, Member, IEEE, Kamran Ghavami, Mort Naraghi-Pour, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication, also re-
ferred to as Internet of Things (IoT), is a global network of
devices such as sensors, actuators and smart appliances which
collect information, and can be controlled and managed in real-
time over the Internet. Due to their universal coverage, cellular
networks and the Internet together offer the most promising
foundation for the implementation of M2M communication.
With the worldwide deployment of the fourth-generation (4G)
of cellular networks, the long-term evolution (LTE) and LTE-
advanced standards have defined several quality-of-service classes
in order to accommodate the M2M traffic. However, cellular
networks are mainly optimized for Human-to-Human (H2H)
communication. The characteristics of M2M traffic are different
from the human-generated traffic and consequently create sever
problems in both radio access and the core networks. This survey
on M2M communication in LTE/LTE-A explores the issues,
solutions and the remaining challenges to enable and improve
M2M communication over cellular networks. We first present an
overview of the LTE networks and discuss the issues related to
M2M applications on LTE. We investigate the traffic issues of
M2M communications and the challenges they impose on both
access channel and traffic channel of a radio access network
and the congestion problems they create in the core network.
We present a comprehensive review of the solutions for these
problems which have been proposed in the literature in recent
years and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each
method. The remaining challenges are also discussed in detail.
Index Terms—Internet of thing, Machine-to-Machine (M2M)
communication, Long Term Evolution (LTE), Access channel,
Traffic channel.
I. I NTRODUCTION
To date, the vast majority of internet traffic has been a result
of human-to-human (H2H) communication via computers or
mobile devices. However, in recent years, a major paradigm
shift has been on the way. The Internet of Things (IoT) is
the new marvel of information technology; an evolution from
isolated closed systems to a gigantic Internet-enabled network
of connected devices with embedded technology that sense
the environment, find the state of phenomena of interest,
take proper action, send information to other devices and
gain intelligence by receiving information from the network.
This evolution creates enormous opportunities for factory
Copyright (c) 2012 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted.
However, permission to use this material for any other purposes must be
obtained from the IEEE by sending a request to pubs-permissions@ieee.org.
Erfan Soltanmohammadi was with the Division of Electrical and Com-
puter Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA. Since May 2014 he has been
with Marvell Semiconductor, Inc., 5488 Marvell Lane, Santa Clara, CA 95054
{email: erfan@marvell.com}
Kamran Ghavami and Mort Naraghi-Pour are with the Division of Electrical
and Computer Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Com-
puter Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803 {e-mail:
kghava1, naraghi@lsu.edu}.
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automation, patient monitoring, auto-identification, automotive
sensor systems, home energy management, transportation,
water distribution and smart electric transmission systems. It
is predicted that IoT will connect up to 26 billion devices by
2020 [1].
IoT is also prosaically referred to as Machine-to-Machine
(M2M) communication. Key components of an M2M include
advanced software components, intelligent and autonomous
sensors and actuators, and a communication network infras-
tructure to allow the sensors to disseminate their information
to, and acquire data and intelligence form the outside world.
For communication, a plethora of short-range, local area and
wide area technologies are available including RFID, blue-
tooth, ZigBee Wi-Fi, wireless LAN (WLAN), generic DSL
(xDSL), fiber to the x (FTTx) and cellular networks. Due to
its pervasive nature, wide area coverage, and mobility support,
cellular network has received the most attention for wide area
M2M connections. With its rapid growth, M2M communi-
cation is expected to create significant revenue growth for
cellular network providers. The number of cellular network
connections worldwide used for M2M communication was
47.7 million in 2008 [2].
Although data transmission has been on the rise in the
cellular networks for human-involved applications in the last
decade, cellular networks are mainly optimized for Human-
to-Human (H2H) communication. However, characteristics of
M2M traffic are different from the human-generated traffic in
the cellular networks. The main differences between H2H and
M2M traffic can be expressed as follows [3].
• Different uplink and downlink traffic loads: In contrast to
H2H, in M2M devices the uplink traffic is higher than
downlink.
• Temporal distribution of Traffic: While H2H traffic is
mostly concentrated during daylight and evening, M2M
traffic is more uniformly generated by the M2M devices
throughout the day. For further traffic distribution char-
acteristics details, we refer to the paper by Tyagi et. al.
[4].
• Periodic traffic: In some applications (e.g., involving
metering devices) M2M traffic is periodic.
• Bursty traffic: In some monitoring applications, the vol-
ume of traffic increases sharply after the detection of
events.
• Mobility: For many classes of M2M devices, M2M de-
vices have a much lower mobility than H2H devices.
However, for the healthcare devices which are expected to
be worn by the users, and for accessories such as Google
glass and Apple watch, the mobility are the same as the
H2H devices.
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• QoS requirements: The quality of service (QoS) require-

ments of M2M and H2H devices may be vastly different.
While an M2M device typically sends or receives a small
packet of data at each transmission or reception epoch, the
extremely large number of M2M devices1 may cause sever
problems in both access channel and traffic channel of a radio
access network and congestion in the core network. Some
organizations such as the 3rd Generation Partnership Project
(3GPP) have been working to address these problems in the
latest release of cellular protocols.
With the transition of cellular networks from 2G and 3G to
long term evolution (LTE), many M2M applications are being
pushed onto the LTE networks. A number of LTE features
make them attractive for M2M applications.
• M2M devices are expected to have long life cycles and
Fig. 1. Radio access network interfaces.
LTE provides a good option for longevity.
• The spectral efficiency of LTE networks allows them
to handle the large volume of traffic generated by the LTE physical layer has asymmetrical data rate for uplink
multitude of M2M devices. and downlink. In LTE release 8 the downlink rate can reach
• The low latency of LTE networks is important for many upto 300 Mbps, whereas the uplink rate is limited to 75Mbps.
M2M applications. This asymmetry is clearly well-suited for human-involved
• LTE networks allow for extremely fast connection setup applications, whereas, as mentioned previously, in M2M ap-
and release which is suitable for M2M devices sending plications, higher data rates are expected in the uplink. The
small data packets. network is optimized subject to downlink rate and uplink
• The division of bandwidth in 3G networks is coarse. In power consumption, the latter on account of the limitations
contrast in LTE networks a smaller amount of downlink of user battery.
bandwidth (as small as 12 sub-carriers) can be allocated Fig. 1 shows the radio access network of an LTE system
to a user thereby allowing more devices to be connected serving both H2H and M2M devices referred to as User
to the network. Equipment (UE). The LTE network architecture is divided
In this paper we present an overview of the LTE networks into the Radio Access Network (RAN) and the Core Network
and discuss the issues related to M2M applications on LTE (CN). Enhanced Node B (eNB) is the base station component
networks. In particular we investigate the traffic issues of M2M of the LTE network providing PHY and MAC layer services
communications and the suggested solutions to these issues to broadband users. In contrast to 3G networks where the
in detail. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In network intelligence is mostly concentrated in the core, in LTE
Section II, we briefly overview Long Term Evolution (LTE) a great deal of network intelligence resides in the eNBs. This
cellular standard. In Section III, the M2M characteristic and together with the high-speed and low-latency X2 interfaces
modeling of M2M devices are explained. The traffic issue and connecting the eNBs, makes it possible for many functions
the solutions to them in access channel overload, data channel such as handover and load management to be executed by the
overload, and core network overload are explained in Section eNBs instead of in the core. One of the important services of
IV, Section V, and Section VI respectively. Finally we draw eNB, which is involved in access and traffic control of UEs
some concluding remarks in Section VII. and is frequently referred to in this paper, is Radio Resource
Control (RRC); see section II-B for more details.
II. A B RIEF OVERVIEW ON LTE NETWORK
A. Frame Structure in LTE
Mobile carriers worldwide have announced that they plan
Both uplink and downlink transmissions are coordinated
to convert their networks to Long Term Evolution (LTE). In
into radio frames of duration 10 ms. Each frame is identified
LTE, Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-
by a number known as System Frame Number (SFN). The
FDMA) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access
SFN period is 1024, roughly equivalent to 10 s. Each frame is
(OFDMA) are used, respectively, for uplink and downlink
divided into 10 equally sized sub-frames, and each sub-frame
channels. Using OFDMA, radio resources consisting of sub-
is divided into two equally sized slots of 0.5 ms. Different
sets of sub-carriers can be assigned to individual users. The
frame types are used for FDD (Type 1) and TDD (Type
entire frequency band is divided into small sub-carriers, each
2) based on the information carried in specific slots. More
with a 15 kHz bandwidth. In each sub-carrier QPSK, 16-
precisely, each frame in TDD is divided into two half-frames
QAM, or 64-QAM can be used as the modulation scheme.
of 5 ms with each half-frame divided into 5 sub-frames. The
Both Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division
second sub-frame in each half-frame is allocated to uplink
Duplex (TDD) are supported.
pilot (UpPTS), downlink pilots (DwPTS) and a guard period
1 For example, a sensor network used to monitor an environment may (GP) between them. The detailed structures of TDD and FDD
comprise of hundreds or thousands of sensor devices. frames are shown in Fig. 2.

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Fig. 2. Top: Type 1 Frame Type. Timing allocations for FDD frame with
normal cyclic prefix (CP). Bottom: Type 2 Frame Type. Timing allocations
for TDD frame.
Fig. 3. The LTE physical time-frequency resource.
Each sub-frame consists of two slots and each slot is
divided into 6 or 7 OFDM symbols depending on whether
an extended cyclic prefix is employed or not. Each sub-carrier
has a bandwidth of 15 KHz and each symbol by one 15 kHz
sub-carrier form a resource element, as shown in Fig. 3. A set
of 12 consecutive sub-carriers, each of duration one slot form
a Resource Block (RB) which is the smallest unit of resources
that can be allocated to a user. Therefore, an RB occupies a
bandwidth of 180 kHz. Note that RB is the smallest resource
in LTE that can be allocated between M2M and H2H devices.
In the following we discuss how these RBs are aggregated to
form frames for use in uplink and downlink.
1) Downlink physical channels: In LTE different parts of
downlink frames are assigned for different purposes known
as physical downlink channels and downlink physical signals
(see Fig.4) including2 :
• Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH): is used
to transport user data. The RBs in this channel are shared
among UEs.
• Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH): is used to send
2 The
channels with bold font styles play an important role in M2M
communications.
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Fig. 4. The framing structure for downlink physical channels and physical
signals for FDD and normal CP. The extended CP and TDD have slightly
different structure.
cell specific system identification and access control
parameters.
• Physical Control Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH):
indicates the number of OFDM symbols used in downlink
control channel (PDCCH)
• Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH): is used
to allocate uplink and downlink resources to UEs.
• Physical Multicast Channel (PMCH): is used for multi-
casting information to multiple UEs.
• Physical Hybrid ARQ (HARQ) Indicator Channel
(PHICH): is used to transmit ACKs and NACKs to UEs
in response to uplink transmissions.
• Reference Signal (RS): is used to help the UEs estimate
the downlink channel.
• Synchronization Signals (P-SS and S-SS): are used for
timing and frequency acquisition when a device wants to
connect to a cell, frame timing synchronization and for
reminding of the cell ID.
2) Uplink physical channels: Similarly, different parts of
uplink frame are assigned to different channels and signals
(see Fig. 5) including:
• Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH): is used by
UEs to transmit control information including channel
quality indication (CQI), ACK and NACK responses for
HARQ, and uplink scheduling requests indicator (SRI)3 .
• Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH): is allocated
by the uplink scheduler in eNB. The resources for
PUSCH are multiples of sub-frames.
4
• Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH ): is used
by UEs to request access from eNB.
• Uplink Reference Signal (RS): is used to facilitate the
coherent demodulation in the uplink, which uses SC-
FDMA.
B. Random Access Request
When the UE is switched on for the very first time, it starts
searching for the network. In order to find the network of
the operator to which it subscribes, the UE goes through an
initial cell synchronization procedure, where it acquires the
physical cell identification (PCI), and time slot and frame
3 Scheduling request could be considered as the biggest issue of M2M
communication over LTE.
4 PRACH and RACH abbreviations are used interchangeably in this paper.
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Fig. 5. Top: The framing structure for uplink physical channels and physical
signals. Bottom: PRACH is multiplexed with PUSCH and PUCCH
synchronization. This will enable the UE to read system
information blocks from a particular network.
After synchronization is achieved, the UE goes through a
random access procedure to inform the network of its desire to
connect. Generally, in LTE networks, the UE needs the random
access procedure for several reasons: 1) to join the network
for the first time; 2) after a link break down; 3) to handover to
a new cell; 4) for location updates 5) for scheduling requests.
The random access procedure involves the transmission of a
preamble from a predefined set. There are 64 preambles in
each cell. When the UE attempts to connect to the network for
the first time, the network cannot inform the UE about which
one of the 64 preambles should be used. Therefore in this case
a preamble is selected at random by the UE and this results
in the possibility of collision if another UE is using the same
preamble. However, in the case of cell handover from one eNB
to another, the eNB informs the UE which preamble (selected
from a small number of preambles set aside for contention-free
access), to use.
UEs can send their access requests during allocated random
access resources (previously described as PRACH). Based
on the access load, waiting time, and bandwidth, PRACH is
formed into several configurations for each preamble format.
The detailed descriptions of each configuration can be found
in Table 5.7.1-2 and Table 5.7.1-3 of [5]. As shown in Fig. 5,
PRACH is multiplexed with PUCCH and PUSCH.
As shown in Fig. 6, each random access procedure consists
of the following steps:
1) Random Access Preamble Transmission: In this step, each
UE sends its access request by transmitting one of 64 orthog-
onal and predefined preambles, as well as a temporary identity
RA-RNTI (random access radio network temporary identity)
which is actually based on the time slot in which the preamble
is transmitted.
2) Random Access Response: In this step, the eNB transmits
the access response which contains the index of the detected
random access preamble, the scheduling for Step 3, the timing
offset (so the UE can change its timing to compensate for the
round trip delay), and the uplink resources to UE for use in
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Fig. 6. Random access procedure in LTE has four steps.
Step 3.
3) Terminal Identification: In this step, the UE sends its ID,
and the needed additional messages.
4) Contention Resolution: In this step, the eNB announces the
IDs of all accesses granted to UEs.
Since it is possible that more than one UE uses the same
preamble and temporary identity in step 1, the eNB may or
may not receive this preamble successfully. Therefore, the two
last steps are required for verifying which of the UEs, if any,
must get the access permission.
III. M2M T RAFFIC M ODELS
Access requests, originated by M2M devices, are clas-
sified by 3GPP into two groups of uncoordinated/non-
synchronized and coordinated/synchronized traffic [6], [7].
Coordinated/synchronized traffic is a type of traffic generated
by many similar M2M devices in reaction to an event5 ,
whereas uncoordinated/non-synchronized traffic is a result of
independent reporting of data. As shown in Table I, depending
on whether a limited or unlimited time span is considered,
different statistical models are proposed for each traffic group
in terms of the access probability.
The access request for coordinated/synchronized traffic in
a limited time span of T ms can be modeled by the Beta
distribution given by, [6]
tα−1 (T − t)β−1
p(t) = (1)
T α+β−2 beta(α, β)
in which, p(t) is the probability density function (pdf) of
access requests, beta(., .) is the Beta function, and α > 0,
β > 0. Based on experimental results, in [6] it is suggested to
set α = 3 and β = 4. This distribution can model the access
requests in which all events take place between t = 0 and
t = T . This pdf is suitable for the coordinated/synchronized
behavior in which a collision may still happen even when the
access attempt rate is below the RACH capacity. Moreover,
M2M devices with high path loss still have a chance to get
access even under heavy load.
5 For example, power meters delivering their measurements after an outage.
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TABLE I
S UGGESTED DISTRIBUTIONS FOR M2M ACCESS TRAFFIC
Synchronized/Coordinated Non-synchronized/Uncoordinated
Limited time Unlimited time Limited time Unlimited time
span span span
Beta - Uniform
Because of the large number of M2M devices and
time-independence of access requests in uncoordinated/non-
synchronized traffic, when the time span is limited, the arrival
process is modeled by the uniform density function. On the
other hand, when the time span is unlimited, the Poisson arrival
process is suggested to model the access requests.
Jian et. al. in [8] investigate different applicable queuing
models for M2M access traffic for arrival distributions of Beta,
Poisson, and uniform. They assume that exponential service
time is provided by a single server.
A. Effect of Synchronized/Coordinated Traffic on Access
In [9], Paiva et. al. evaluate through simulation the effects
of M2M access traffic in GSM networks. It is shown that, as
expected, highly synchronized M2M access traffic increases
the access delay for H2H devices or may even block the
access channel. Conversely, the simulations show that the
less-synchronized M2M traffic has a smaller effect on H2H
access traffic. To solve the deleterious effect of stationary
and periodic access requests from M2M devices, in [10], the
authors suggest to use a future network access during a previ-
ous connection. In the proposed method, for the initialization
the device can use the ordinary random access mechanism.
However, after it starts its data transmission, it can request
the next time schedule. The simulation results show that this
approach decreases the required signaling and collisions for
access requests, resulting in improved average access delay.
B. Simulation Models for M2M Traffic Access Requests
For situations where the number of M2M devices is small
and for multiple packet transmissions, Laner et. al. propose
to use a Markov Modulated Poisson Process (MMPP) [11]
to simulate the M2M access request traffic. In this model,
the access traffic generated by each M2M device is modeled
by a Poisson process whose rate depends on the state of a
Markov chain. Although this model is useful to simulate non-
synchronized/uncoordinated M2M access traffic, it may not be
practically feasible for the network administrator to estimate
the model parameters.
Nikaein et. al. proposed a 4-state Markov chain for simu-
lating M2M data packet generation [12]. The four states con-
sidered are periodic update, event driven, payload exchange,
and off as shown in Fig. 8. In the periodic update state,
based on a regular time pattern, an M2M device generates
constant-size data packets, for instance for status reports.
In the event driven state, the M2M device is triggered by
an external event and generates traffic conforming to this
event. The Payload Exchange is followed by either Periodic
Update or Event Driven states, and a larger amount of data
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Things Journal
span
Poisson
Fig. 7. Each M2M device is represented by a Markov chain for simulation
of M2M access traffic suggested by Laner et. al. in [11]. Each state represent
different rate.
Fig. 8. M2M trafc simulaion model suggested by [12]
is generated by the M2M Devices in this state. However,
this (discrete-time) Markov chain model is not an appropriate
means for generating event-based traffic, and a continuous-
time Markov process may be a better solution. A brief analysis
and simulation of both models in [11] and [12] can be found
in [13].
Ahmadian et. al. proposed a mathematical model for the dy-
namic contention behavior of multiple nodes in multi-channel
environments [14]. In their model, they proposed identical
transmission time for all nodes. They also assumed that there
is an error-free and real-time feedback from the eNB to each
node, such that nodes can immediately find the result of
their transmission. Accordingly, they assumed several activity
states, including ”inactivated” and ”backlogged”, which the
nodes may experience until their transmission finally becomes
successful. They extended the uniform backoff algorithm of
ALOHA into two categories of Immediate First Transmission
(IFT) and Delayed First Transmission (DFT). Also, depending
on the priority of backlogged nodes with respect to idle ones,
they also divide DFT into two more classes, DFT-1 and
DFT-2. Finally, they derived the performance metrics, such
as system throughput and the average medium access delay,
of all three classes (IFT, DFT-1, and DFT-2) and verified
them with the simulation results. The authors claim that the
proposed analytical results can be applied to any contention-
based application over 3GPP LTE systems.
Seo and Leung in [15] analyzed the performance of expo-
nential backoff and uniform backoff based on a Markov model.
They showed by adjusting the parameters of each algorithm,
the two algorithms provide identical throughput as mean of
retransmission delay.
According to [7], the random access channels can be
allocated to H2H and M2M devices in joint or disjoint
manner, called joint allocation (JA) and disjoint allocation
(DA), respectively. In the standard JA method, H2H nodes can
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access the random access channel resources of M2M notes. In

[16] the authors present analytical expressions for performance
metrics (depending on the type of resource allocation between
H2H and M2M traffic), such as throughput and probability of
collision. In contrast with the standard JA, this paper suggests
that M2M node can utilize the H2H random access resources.
The analytical work of this paper is based on the assumption
of Poisson traffic model for H2H nodes and Beta traffic model
for M2M devices. The simulation results show that under
specific traffic load of H2H and M2M node, using the proposed
method, it is possible to decrease the probability of collision.
In addition, the proposed algorithm can reduce the power
consumption of M2M nodes.

IV. ACCESS C HANNEL OVERLOAD

For the network administrator, it is essential to have the
ability to control network congestion independently from the
application provider [17]. The very large number of M2M
devices together with the nature of their simultaneous access
traffic causes congestion in RACH and has a destructive effect
on H2H communication [18]. 3GPP has defined the following
four criteria on the access methods for M2M in order to
minimize the adverse effects of M2M devices [19].
1) Integration of M2M into the cellular network must have
a minimal effect on H2H communication.
2) For many M2M applications delay may not be the
primary concern. Instead, the ability of the network to
predict the behavior of M2M devices in the RAN may
be of paramount importance.
3) Minimizing the impact on the current cellular networks
and ease of integration into the network is important.
4) Support and enhance the overload control in the CN.
Fig. 9. Classification of different mechanisms suggested to solve the access
Proper actions have to be taken to solve the problem of M2M traffic
access traffic overload by satisfying the above criteria.
The M2M access mechanism can be categorized by the
application into push-based and pull-based mechanisms. The normalized between 0 and 1 here) for each class as a threshold
push-based approaches are used for event or time triggered and broadcasts them over the cell. In addition, the eNB also
applications, where the M2M devices decide about the chan- broadcasts per class barring times over the cell. Let us denote
nel access. In contrast, the pull-based approaches are used the barring factor and the barring time corresponding to the
by M2M server in collaboration with the cellular network, service class of an M2M device by N and T , respectively.
whereby the eNB pages the M2M devices, [7], [20]. This After receiving the barring factors and barring times, the M2M
mechanism can alleviate the overload issues at RACH, but device generates a random number, n between 0 and 1; if n
it may create overload in the paging channel [21], [22]. is smaller than its corresponding service class threshold N , it
Fig. 9 shows a classification of different mechanisms sug- tries to access the channel. Otherwise, it waits for a random
gested to solve the access traffic. In the following we describe time proportional to its corresponding barring time T . This
each mechanism in detail. approach randomizes the access times of the M2M devices,
[17] thereby reducing the congestion in the access channel.
 Push-based Mechanisms The details of ACB are shown in Algorithm 1.
In this part, we study different Push-based mechanisms
For efficient selection of the barring factors in ACB, Wu et.
proposed by 3GPP and other parties.
al. suggest an approach for bursty M2M access requests [24].
As suggested previously for slotted-ALOHA, they assumed
A. Access Class Barring Scheme that the optimum barring factor is the reciprocal of the number
A well-liked mechanism proposed by 3GPP for solving of access requests. This optimality is based on access requests
the RACH overload problem is Access Class Barring (ACB) arriving according to a Poisson process, although they assumed
scheme, in which the eNB can control the access traffic that the Beta distribution for the M2M access traffic. In order to
the M2M devices impose onto the network, [23]. In ACB, set the barring factor, the number of access requests should
the eNB defines several classes based on service requirements be estimated by the eNB. Therefore, the authors assume
and service emergency called barring factor (assumed to be that the eNB is able to detect if a collision occurred in

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begin
eNB B: broadcast 1) Barring factor, 2) Barring time,
for each access class;
M2M device A: find the barring factor, N , and the
barring time, T , of your class;
Start-A: Generate a random number, n;
if n < N then
A: try to access the channel;
else
A: wait for a random time proportional to T ;
Go back to Start.
end
end
Algorithm 1: Access Class Barring algorithm [23]
the last slot (without explaining how this can be achieved).
Accordingly, they define a slot status to be one of the three
cases: idle, one successful access, and collision. In order to
adaptively estimate the number of accesses for the next time
slot, they used the intuitive facts that if collisions happen
in consecutive slots, then the number of access requests is
underestimated, and similarly, many consecutive idle slots
indicate an overestimation of the number of accesses. Their
numerical results show that the average delay approaches the
case of perfect knowledge, where the eNB knows the exact
number of access requests.
As listed below, several modifications of the ACB scheme
have been suggested in order to improve its performance for
different proposes.
• Separate ACB for M2M and H2H Devices
• Extended Access Barring
• Cooperative ACB
• Prioritized Random Access and Dynamic ACB
Next we briefly review these modifications.
1) Separate ACB for M2M and H2H devices: In [25] two
simplified approaches are proposed by 3GPP, where M2M
devices are separated from H2H devices. The first approach,
which is also stated in [7] and [26], is to apply different ACB
methods to M2M and H2H devices. In the second approach,
the eNB simply sends two different thresholds, NM2M > NH2H .
If the random number generated by an H2H device is smaller
than NH2H , then it sends an access request. On the other hand,
if the random number generated by an M2M device is greater
than NM2M , then it can attempt for channel access. By this
mechanism, the eNB can control the number of M2M access
requests.
2) Extended Access Barring: A modification of ACB
named Extended Access Barring (EAB) is suggested by 3GPP
in which access barring applies only on a class of devices that
can tolerate delayed channel access. In the case of congestion,
the eNB forbids channel access requests by devices in the EAB
class. EAB method is investigated by Larmo and Susitaival
in [27]. EAB is implemented in UMTS, in which 16 access
classes (AC0-AC15) are defined for user equipment. The last
6 classes are reserved for emergency calls and high priority
accesses, and will never be barred. 10-bit mapping is assigned
to the first ten classes, AC0-AC9. Then the eNB can bar each
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class by setting the bit corresponding to that class to 0. This
bitmap will be broadcast over the cell frequently and according
to the access traffic. A cyclic rotation can be periodically
applied to the bitmap to fairly allocate the access resources
to different access classes [27]. Numerical simulations in [27]
show that using EAB can distribute the access requests more
uniformly in time. It’s noteworthy that since EAB does not
have any random parameter, a higher access load is expected
immediately after unbarring a class.
A comprehensive analysis of EAB can be found in [28]. In
this paper, Cheng et. al. modeled 3GPP’s EAB and derived
the performance metrics including access success probability,
collision probability, and average access delay versus the
model parameters Ts and Tp which represent the repetition
period of system information blocks and the length of a
paging cycle, respectively. The simulation results show that by
increasing the ratio of Tp to Ts , the probability of successful
accesses will increase. The paper also suggests an approach
for optimizing the EAB based on the target QoS.
3) Cooperative ACB: Due to the large delay imposed by
ordinary ACB on M2M devices in a dense area, a cooperative
ACB approach is suggested by Lien et. al. [29]. The motivation
for this approach is based on the multi-tier architecture of LTE-
A network, in which devices may be covered by more than
one eNB. In the proposed algorithm, instead of associating a
barring threshold individually by each eNB for its cell, a set
of M thresholds, N = {N1 , N2 , . . . , NM }, are determined
for M eNBs cooperatively. It is assumed that eNBs can
collaborate on this issue by using the X2 links. To assign
the thresholds to cells, a minmax optimization problem is
defined in order to minimize the maximum number of access
requests in the M cells. In this way, the access requests
are distributed throughout the network of M cells which,
consequently, minimizes the largest delay in the network. For
each device, an eNB selection strategy has been defined, by
assigning a probability to every eNB that the device can
k
access. In particular, let N k = N1k , N2k , . . . , NM
k
be the
set of thresholds assigned to the Mk eNBs that the k-th
device can access. Then,PMthe k-th device selects the i-th eNB
with probability Nik / j=1 k
Njk , and uses an ordinary ACB
with threshold Nik . Finally, [29] proposes an algorithm to
estimate the number of devices which can access each eNB.
Since the barring thresholds are inversely proportional to the
number of devices being served, these estimates can be used
for updating the thresholds. Numerical results in [29] show
that while the average throughput remains unchanged, by
applying the cooperative ACB, the imposed access delay for
the same number of M2M devices decreases in comparison to
the ordinary ACB.
4) Prioritized Random Access and Dynamic ACB: Cheng
et. al. in [30] propose a prioritized random access jointly with
dynamic ACB mechanism to improve the performance of the
random access channel. In the proposed model, all devices
are classified into five groups based on priority and QoS
requirements. They preallocate the random access resources to
these groups. Also, for each group a specific back-off number
is considered. Since this mechanism cannot overcome the
collision problem in dense cells, they suggest using dynamic
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ACB approach. The eNB estimates the access load by tracking
the number of successfully decoded RACH requests, and then
enables ACB. An approach similar to dynamic ACB called
dynamic back-off is suggested by Lin et. al. in [31] in which
the eNB dynamically calculates the back-off window size
(which is equivalent to barring time), according to the RACH
traffic load.
3GPP shows in [32] that applying ACB for dense M2M
networks cannot effectively compensate the channel access
loads. In addition, while the problem of access collisions can
be mitigated by increasing the ACB threshold, the access delay
will be increased. To alleviate this difficulty an evolutionary
game-based ACB scheme is proposed in [33]. In this scheme
the M2M devices which fall in the overlapped area of more
than one eNB are guided to select the available eNB to perform
the random access. An evolutionary game is formulated where
the game strategies are the the devices’ choice of the eNB
and the payoff is the utility of the devices defined in terms of
the channel capacity and the proportion of devices choosing
each eNB. Simulation results show that the proposed method
improves the access delay of M2M devices.
B. Back-off Scheme
To mitigate random access overload, several authors have
proposed to employ random back-off after collisions based on
slotted-ALOHA and its modified versions. These include
• Separate Back-off
• Adaptive S-ALOHA
• Adaptive MACA
1) Separate Back-off: 3GPP in [34] suggested a separate
back-off scheme in which delay-sensitive M2M devices to-
gether with H2H devices form class 1, and delay-insensitive
M2M devices form class 2. Then, different back-off schemes
are applied to these two classes. In this approach, after expe-
riencing a collision in the random access channel, devices in
class 2 back-off for a longer random time. Through simulation,
it is shown in [34] that this scheme prevents excessive delays
for devices in class 1. Another good point of using this scheme
is to prevent changes in the current back-off scheme for H2H
devices.
Bello et. al. have suggested to design a virtual frame of
RA slots in which the users send access requests [35]. Each
M2M device scores each RA slot in the virtual frame using
the Q-learning method. The Q-learning method keeps track
of the success probability of access for each RA slot in the
virtual frame which will be used in the future to find the
best slot to send an access request. The main idea in this
paper is that for the initial access request both H2H and
M2M devices can share the same frames, but after a collision
happens, H2H devices and M2M devices use different back-off
frames. Therefore the H2H devices are restricted from sending
requests in an M2M frame and also M2M devices are not
allowed to transmit in the H2H back-off frames. This method
improves the performance because the randomness of back-off
is decreased in comparison to pure Aloha.
Jian et. al. have suggested a pure back-off scheme as well
as a mixed back-off and ACB scheme based on the cell load
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information [36]. As in the case of separate back-off, the
devices in the cell are classified into several classes based on
their delay sensitivity. The eNB broadcasts the system load
information and some other parameters to devices in the cell.
In the first method, which is a pure back-off scheme, the eNB
broadcasts a number in the interval [0, 1] which is proportional
to the cell load. Then after a collision occurs, the device
generates a random back-off time as a function of its class,
cell load, and the total number of M2M devices in the cell. In
the mixed back-off and ACB scheme, the eNB broadcasts a
number, named barring check parameter, in addition to the cell
load. Then each device calculates its access barring threshold
as well as its back-off time. By numerical simulations in [36],
it is shown that by using the proposed schemes, the collision
probability decreases. Note that, in these two approaches, each
M2M device must know the total number of M2M devices in
the cell, which is hard to obtain. Moreover, for heavy load
cells, the back-off time and barring threshold can be combined
into a single random time, in which case either the back-off
scheme or the ACB scheme can be used instead of the mixed
scheme.
2) Adaptive S-ALOHA: S-ALOHA achieves its maximum
throughput for the access request rate of one per slot [37]. Li
et. al. use this fact to control the access request rate. The eNB
sets an access request probability (similar to ACB method),
using the information on the number of free spaces in the
random access channel so that the access request rate is one
per slot.
3) Adaptive MACA: Wang et. al. in [38] model the M2M
access traffic with a Poisson process with high arrival rates,
and proposed a modified version of Multiple Access with
Collision Avoidance (MACA) in [39] for access control. In
the slotted MACA, if the traffic load exceeds the optimal load,
the throughput decreases excessively. Therefore, they suggest
that the eNB broadcasts an access probability for the request-
to-send (RTS) messages in order to control the access load.
This method is similar to ACB algorithm.
C. Slotted Access
In [40], 3GPP proposes a method to alleviate access over-
load for delay-insensitive M2M applications. The framing
structure of the LTE cellular communication is used, in which,
each device can use system frames (each of duration 10 ms)
as access slots. In the proposed approach, each device should
use its paging channel for both ordinary downlink paging tasks
and up-link transmission of access requests. Thus, the system
should provide the ability of pushing mechanism in the paging
channel in addition to pulling. An access cycle is defined
to be a set of L consecutive access slots, which is repeated
periodically. The M2M devices in the cell are divided into C
classes and a distinct number is associated with each class.
Since each system frame in LTE is identified by a System
Frame Number (SFN) with a period of 1024 frames, [41],
M2M devices can use SFNs to find their access slots. Each
M2M device is only permitted to send an access request in a
specific time slot in each access cycle. Specifically, an M2M
device in class c can send an access request in the system
frame with SFN = s, if c mod L = s. In this scheduling
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method, M2M devices should be synchronized with the system
framing. Fig. 10 shows the timing diagram of the slotted access
method for two devices from two different classes using their
assigned RBs. The first device can send access request when
SF N = s and the second device can send an access request
when SF N = r.
Since there are several LTE RBs or preambles in each slot,
it’s possible to serve more than one access request in each
one. Therefore, the devices should still contend for access
to resources in each slot. According to this fact, randomly
assigning the slots to H2H and M2M devices may decrease
the performance of this approach, while pre-assigning the
resources can increase the efficiency up to three times [19].
 Comparison of slotted access, ACB, and back-off schemes
As explained in [19], the slotted access approach has several
advantages in comparison to the ACB method as listed below.
1) The simulation results show that the slotted approach has
a better access success rate, even in the case of randomly
assigned access slots.
2) By slotted access, it will be possible to more uniformly
distribute the access requests in slots and RBs, and
achieve a contention-free mechanism.
3) In terms of complexity, while ACB imposes signaling
overloads, slotted access uses the already provided pag-
ing mechanism and does not add any further complexity.
The only requirement of the slotted access method is
providing the capability for M2M devices to access their
paging channels in uplink direction.
4) Slotted access can also be used for more precise net-
work overload control. Since network access requests
may have has a bursty nature, ACB’s access blocking
resolution is not small enough to effectively control this
type of traffic. However, the precise regulation in slotted
access allows the network to control the overload more
precisely with the resolution order of a system frame.
Table II shows a brief comparison of the three approaches,
ACB, backoff and slotted access, proposed by 3GPP for
overcoming the LTE’s RACH congestion issues, [42]. The
numerical results in this table are provided for a Beta traffic
arrival process over 10 seconds. For the slotted access (shown
in light gray), three slot sizes of 256, 512, and 1024 are
considered. The ACB simulations (shown in medium gray)
are considered for three barring factors of 0.9, 0.7, and 0.5,
and 4, 8, and 16 seconds of barring time. Finally, three back-
off times of 20ms, 240ms, and 960ms are used in the back-
off simulations (shown in dark gray). The three methods
are compared in terms of M2M access success probability,
RACH preamble collision probability, and H2H VoIP success
probability for different device populations. It can be seen that
in all scenarios, the slotted access method outperforms the
other mechanisms. Also, these results show that the slotted
access has the minimum effect on the H2H access traffic.
D. Opportunistic Access
Another method proposed in [40] uses the fact that M2M
devices are experiencing different time varying shadowing. It
proposes an algorithm based on the channel quality, in that the
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nodes with better channel quality have the opportunity to send
their access requests. In detail, an M2M device measures the
downlink channel quality, and if its channel quality is above
an assigned threshold by the eNB, it has the opportunity to
send the channel request. The eNB can control the access load
by changing this threshold. It is shown in [40] that by using
this method, the spectrum usage efficiency will be improved.
E. Separate Resource Allocation
Allocating different access resources for H2H devises is an
assured way to minimize the effect of M2M devices on H2H
communication. This can be achieved by different resource
allocation methods such as
• Separate RACH Allocation
• Dynamic RACH Allocation
• Adaptive RACH allocation
• Asynchronous Simultaneous Small Data Transmission
• Self Optimizing Overload Control
1) Separate RACH Allocation: Since the cornerstone of
each cellular network is based on H2H services, minimizing
the effects of M2M applications on H2H services has a
high priority for network administrators. To this point, simply
separating the allocated resources to H2H and M2M could
be the easiest approach. As discussed in [7], this separation
approach in LTE can be done in two ways. The first way is
simply splitting the RBs or preambles into two groups of H2H
and M2M resources. This is also proposed by Lee in [43].
The separate access resources is also proposed by 3GPP
in [44], in which the resources are divided into two groups
providing different access opportunities for different devices.
In [45], Lee et. al. propose two methods based on access
resource separation. Similar to the approach above, in their
first method, they propose a simple separation of access
preambles between H2H and M2M devices. In the second
method, the preambles are split into two groups, such that
one group is used by H2H devices only, and the second group
can be used by both H2H and M2M devices. Moreover, they
assume that access of the M2M devices is controlled by the
ACB method. In this algorithm, the authors set the minimum
resource preambles for the second group such that the resulting
throughput for M2M devices is the same as that of the first
approach. To guarantee the throughput of H2H devices, the
barring factor is used to set a limit on the average requests
from M2M devices. As stated in [45], to control the M2M
access requests, the eNB decreases the barring factor to lower
values, so that the expected number of requests remains fixed.
In this case, the variance of the number of requests will be
increased due to the fact that in the binomial distribution, if
the mean is kept constant, then the variance increases with
the number of independent trials. It is noteworthy that, while
this paper applies the Poisson distribution, using the Beta
distribution which is proposed by 3GPP, may lead to more
accurate results.
The complete numerical results for these two methods by
Lee et. al. can be found in [46] where the authors evaluate
the random access throughput for three scenarios. First, they
assume the H2H devices have low arrival rates. In this case,
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Things Journal

10

Fig. 10. Timing diagram of the slotted access method where two different devices from two different classes are using the assigned RBs.

TABLE II
P ERFORMANCE OF THE SLOTTED ACCESS ( LIGHT GRAY ), ACB ( MEDIUM GRAY ), AND THE BACK - OFF ( DARK GRAY ) APPROACH UNDER (10 S , B ETA )
SCENARIO .

3GPP, [42] 30k users 10k users 5k users

Number of slot Slot256 Slot512 Slot1024 Slot256 Slot512 Slot1024 Slot256
(Barring factor, Baring time) (0.9, 4s) (0.7, 8s) (0.5, 16s) (0.9, 4s) (0.7, 8s) (0.5 16s) (0.9 4s)
Back-off time 20ms 240ms 960ms 20ms 240ms 960ms 20ms
88.42% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
M2M success probability 53.95% 99.86% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
19.15% 23.44% 41.38% 100% 100% 100% 100%
15.4% 3.56% 1.13% 0.73% 0.37% 0.12% 0.18%
RACH preamble
24.48% 1.9% 0.27% 0.49% 0.098% 0.028% 0.12%
collision probability
48.45% 48.55% 40.25% 1.01% 0.99% 0.92% 0.22%
90.54% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
H2H VoIP success
73.64% 99.58% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
probability
44.44% 54.1% 62.96% 100% 100% 100% 100%

they show that there is a value for the arrival rate of the M2M
devices, below which the second method is slightly better than
the first method, but above that the first method is superior. In
the second scenario, a moderate arrival rate of H2H devices
is considered. A similar behavior to the first scenario was
observed for larger M2M arrival rates. Finally, in the third
scenario, they show that for extremely high H2H arrival rates,
the second method results in a better throughput. This result
is intuitively expected, since allocating fewer access resources
for M2M devices will provide more access opportunities for
H2H devices.
2) Dynamic RACH Allocation: Since M2M traffic is bursty,
and numerous nodes try to access the network in event occa-
sions, using fixed static channel separation may be wasteful of
resources. In contrast, a dynamic algorithm can more smoothly
assign the access resources to H2H and M2M devices and
improve resource utilization.
In dynamic RACH allocation, as proposed in [47], M2M
devices are categorized by types. In this approach, when eNB
accepts the access request from an M2M device, in addition
to granting access, it also allocates some RBs to devices from
the same type, in which M2M devices from the same type can
content for access resources. As it is described in Algorithm 2,
in the proposed method, each M2M device must listen to the
channel, to determine if there is any activity from devices with
the same type. Then it can start contenting with them in the
assigned contention area. As shown in Fig. 11, this contention
area is located inside the RACH. If the device cannot find
any similar type activity, it must start the traditional RACH
procedure and contend with other H2H and M2M devices. The
eNB removes the allocated RBs to a certain type, if it does
not receive any access requests from the devices of that type.
The simulation results in [47] shows that in comparison to the
ordinary static RACH allocation, using the dynamic allocation
method will provide large improvement in the access success
probability as well as in access delay.
In [48] the authors have proposed a dynamic resource allo-
cation procedure for LTE-A using a game theoretic framework.
In this approach the random access resources are divided into
three groups for H2H, for M2M and for hybrid utilization.
A game is formulated and it is shown that a mixed strategy
Nash equilibrium exists for which the M2M devices will have
a positive probability of transmitting preambles. A maximum
likelihood estimation is also proposed to estimate the number
of M2M devices and the hybrid preamble pool. It is shown
through simulations that the performance in the case of esti-
mated parameters is almost the same as the case where the
parameters are perfectly known.
3) Adaptive RACH resource allocation: To adaptively allo-
cate the RACH resources in LTE, [49] suggests a mechanism
for cellular networks assuming a Poisson process model for
the access traffic. They define an optimization problem to
minimize the RACH resources while keeping the average
delay below a certain threshold. A moving average filter over
the arrival rates and the periodicity profile of the users is
utilized by the eNB to predict the upcoming access rate.

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begin
An M2M device, A, has some data to send:
while Contention has not been successfully done do
A, listen to data window of your class;
if same type M2M devices transmitting data then
A, contend in the contention area dedicated to
your class ;
else
A, contend with H2H and M2M devices;
end
end
end
Algorithm 2: Dynamic Separate RACH resources for M2M
devices
Fig. 11. Top: ordinary random access resources. Bottom: Dynamic separate
random access resources.
The simulation results show that in comparison to the fixed
resource allocation, the proposed method decreases the number
of access resources and consequently releases more resources
for data traffic. It would be interesting to investigate a similar
mechanism for access traffic based on Beta distribution traffic
model with a threshold to satisfy the delay requirements of
M2M devices.
Sheu et. al. suggest a two-phase algorithm to solve the
random access overload from M2M devices with periodic
reporting cycle and minimize the access resources allocated
to M2M devices [50]. In the first phase, the M2M devices
contend for the preassigned RACH resources not used by H2H
devices. The M2M devices learn about the random access
resources for their successful connection. This information is
used for future access and results in all the M2M devices
reaching a stable channel scheduling. In the second phase, the
eNB decreases the allocated resources and checks the access
stability from M2M devices, and repeats this process until the
network access requests become stable with minimum access
resources.
In [51] the authors propose a class-based, delay-aware
radio resource scheduler to support M2M traffic with minimal
affect on H2H traffic. The main idea is that in addition to
delay sensitive H2H traffic, there are also many M2M (e.g.,
healthcare related) applications which are delay intolerant [52].
Therefore the proposed algorithm classifies H2H and M2M
flows into n different classes according to their remaining time
to serve (RTTS). Class 1 of H2H and M2M flows are delay
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11
sensitive whereas flows of classes 2 to n − 1 can tolerate some
delay but require a minimum guaranteed bit rate (MGBR).
Starting with class 1, resource blocks are allocated to H2H
flows first and then to M2M flows based on their RTTS. After
that, H2H traffic from classes 2 to n − 1 are served followed
by M2M flows of classes 2 to n − 1. Finally flows of class
n H2H flows are served followed by M2M flows of class n.
In case resources run out in a given transmission time interval
(TTI) (taken to be equal to the duration of a sub-frame) before
flows of all classes are served, all unsatisfied flows are moved
to the next TTI and are allocated along with the new flows.
provides priority to delay sensitive which such as healthcare
related applications which have
there are M2M The goal of designing such a scheduler is to
address following issues: (1) to support delay intolerant H2H
or M2M flows. (2) to ensure MGBR of type 2 applications
discussed in last paragraph. (3) to give preference to H2H
flows over M2M flows in case of similar QoS requirements.
(4) to postpone the scheduling of delay tolerant flows if enough
radio resources are not available.
In this approach M2M
4) Asynchronous Simultaneous Small Data Transmission:
A new interesting transmission mechanism for small data
packets is proposed by Bontu et. al. [53]. Considering the
small size of data packets in M2M applications, they suggested
to use an asynchronous transmission of packets containing
M2M data, ID, and preambles. It is assumed that ahead of
M2M transmission, the eNB broadcasts the allocated resources
for small packets. This mechanism can be easily implemented
in the cellular networks. In the proposed approach, the eNB
estimated the channel information from the received packets,
and it is shown that the performance is very close to that in
which the eNB knows the channel.
5) Self Optimizing Overload Control: Lo et. al. have pro-
posed an enhancement to LTE-A’s random access mechanism,
called self optimization overload control [54]. In their ap-
proach, they suppose that M2M devices report their number of
access retries to the eNB in the third step of the random access
procedure (see section II-B). Base on this information, the eNB
estimates the required amount of access resources, and finally
broadcasts the modification to random access resources over
the cell.
F. Group-based Approaches
Grouping M2M devices into clusters according to functional
similarity or geographical positions is suggested as a mecha-
nism to solve the RACH overload problem. Instead of letting
each M2M device in the cell communicate directly with the
eNB, a communication link is constructed by an intermediate
cluster head. In this way, the cluster heads can control the
access rate to the eNB, thereby reducing the probability of
collisions.
Farhadi and Ito propose a two-layer device partitioning for
mitigating the access channel overload in LTE networks [55].
In the first layer, due to the limited paging signaling (in
LTE up to 16 devices can be paged in one message), the
devices are grouped into a few paging groups. Each paging
group is also partitioned into a number of access groups,
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and for each access group, a cluster head is assigned. Based
on this grouping, they propose to change the LTE’s RACH
procedure to five steps: 1) the eNB pages a desired group, 2)
the cluster head at this group sends the access preambles to
the eNB, 3) the eNB sends the random access response to that
group, 4) the terminal identification is sent to the eNB, 5) the
eNB assigns resources by sending contention resolution. They
also proposed a group-based procedure for uplink data report.
In this mechanism, the devices in each access group send
their data to the cluster head. A resource reuse mechanism
is proposed such that the resources can be used in different
access groups at the same time, which provides better resource
utilization. The simulation results show that increasing the size
of the access group reduces the average access delay.
A group-based extension to LTE RACH procedure is sug-
gested by Lee et. al. in [56]. In the proposed mechanism, it is
assumed that the devices are grouped, and in each group an
M2M device is supposed to periodically transmit the access
preambles to the eNB. And, in the second stage, the eNB
grants the uplink access resources. In the third stage and in
each group, resources are randomly allocated to M2M devices
and they send their required resources. And, the contention
resolution is done at the forth stage. The simulation results
in [56] shows a decrease in random access delay by applying
this mechanism. A similar grouping mechanism is suggested
in [57], in which group based timing control is used for RAN
overload control.
Lien et. al. propose a decision making procedure upon
receiving the data about the characteristic (access rate) and
requirement (delay) after the third step of RACH procedure
in LTE [58]. In this approach, the M2M devices are grouped
based on access request rate and maximum tolerable delay.
Corresponding to these requirement and characteristics the
eNB allocates different access slots. After receiving the device
ID, the requirement, and characteristic at the third step, the
eNB check to see if there is an assigned group for this device.
If such group exists, then the eNB only checks to see if there
is enough resource to support one more device or not. The
device can be served upon the existence of enough resources.
If there is no such group, and the requirement does not violate
other groups, a new group will be created for that specific
requirement and the device will be served. They show that
this method improves the access delay performance.
In [59] the authors have provided a dynamic version of
the decision making procedure. The procedure is similar to
the above method but the scheduler is modified to monitor
the occupancy of each sub-frame. When it identifies the sub-
frames are not being used, they are reassigned to new M2M
devices.
Wang et. al. propose a cluster-based approach for mitigating
the inefficiencies of the ACB algorithm [60]. In their proposed
model, all M2M devices are grouped into different clusters and
access the eNB via a cluster head while the H2H devices ac-
cess the eNB directly. In this method, cellular communication
is also used in links between cluster heads and their members.
There are several aspects that needs to be precisely considered.
For example power control (adjustment) in each cluster is re-
quired in order to avoid interference between cluster members
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12
and the main eNB at the macro cell. This paper proposes
some interesting solutions concerning the inter-cluster access
interference issues. Similar to traditional LTE networks, cluster
members use preambles and the similar 4-step Random Access
Procedure (see section II-B) to send access requests to their
cluster heads. Since the neighboring clusters may use similar
preambles, a threshold on the magnitude of received preambles
is used in each cluster head to detect the corresponding
preambles. This ensures that the cluster head in the machines
cluster can successfully detect the information and feed back
to the machines. In the feedback information the cluster heads
must transmit its ID so that the machines in the neighboring
clusters do not decode the information. Only the machines in
the desired cluster will decode the information.
In [61], Niyato et. al. consider the effect of cluster size on
the total cost of the system considered to be the superposition
of installation cost, packet delay cost, and packet loss cost.
The authors investigate the cost dependency on the packet
generation rate for different cluster sizes and a fixed number
of nodes. They show that for low packet generation rates, the
cost is lower for larger cluster sizes. On the other hand, for
higher packet generation rates, the cost is higher for larger
cluster sizes.
A cluster based network structure to solve the RACH issue
of M2M over LTE is suggested by Lee et. al. in [62]. In their
proposed network, M2M devices can access the eNB either
directly or via cluster heads. The cluster heads are responsible
for transmitting the aggregated data of M2M nodes to the eNB.
Hence, to implement these two access methods, they suggest
that direct connection to the eNB is over LTE channels, and
any connection between M2M devices and the cluster heads
are by using cognitive radio links in TV white space. They
show that using this mechanism the number of nodes using
direct access can be decreased. In addition, they show that the
optimal cluster size and the optimal number of cluster heads
increase with increasing the cognitive radio resources. In their
model, they do not consider the aggregation algorithm and
accessing mechanism of cluster heads to the eNBs, which can
influence the number of RACH requests. As they note, the
proposed approach does not fulfill the requirements of delay-
sensitive applications.
Since both intuitively and practically, clustering can solve
the RACH issue of M2M networks, we discuss in more detail
the proposed clustering algorithm by Azquez-Gallego et. al.
in [63] in order to provide a more clear vision for the reader.
In their model, the cluster heads are capable of accessing into
both a local radio network and the cellular network, while
typical M2M devices can only connect to the local radio
network. For M2M devices to access the M2M server, they
need an intermediate connection to a cluster head. The authors
also assume that each M2M node has prior information about
its neighbors and its cluster head. If any M2M device wants
to transmit data to the M2M server, it must use the following
algorithm:
Each beacon is followed by a specific number of slots that
can be used by other neighboring M2M devices that have
data to send. The authors have not explained how an M2M
device can find the proper cluster head, and how a cluster head
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Things Journal
begin
Initialization:
An M2M device, A, has some data to send to M2M
server:
A: send a request to the associated cluster head, G;
G: start transmitting periodic beacons;
while The network is active, or G’s activity duration
has not ended do
G: transmit a beacon;
A: wait for your slot;
A: wake up;
A: negotiate with G for a dedicated slot;
A: transmit data to G;
A: enter sleep mode;
end
end
Algorithm 3: Clustering mechanism proposed in [63]
dedicates different slots to the cluster members.
Kwon and Choi divide the M2M devices into different
groups based on their SIR (Signal to Interference Ratio)
requirements [64]. They investigate the problem for noiseless
communication link and include channel fading characteristics.
In their model they set the position of M2M nodes and eNBs
according to the Poison Point Process (PPP). They solve the
optimization problem for minimizing the number of resources
(time or frequency needed for random access channel) with
respect to the required SIR for all groups. They do not consider
other factors, such as latency, in defining the QoS. Finally the
positions of the eNBs are assumed to be random.
In [65], Pratas and Popovski propose to use the standard
cellular terminals such as the hand sets as relays for supporting
the M2M traffic. In this way the M2M traffic does not have a
direct link to the eNB but rather through nearby relays. They
propose two network-assisted schemes that enable cooperation
between M2M devices and the standard cellular devices, so
as to meet the outage requirements of M2M devices while
maximizing the rate of the broadband services for the other
devices.
G. Energy-saving Access Mechanisms
A cluster based energy-saving mechanism for random ac-
cess overload control is suggested by Sun et. al. in [66]. In the
proposed model, they assume two different links, one is based
on WLAN and connects M2M devices to each other using a
cluster head, and the other one is based on the cellular protocol
and connects the cluster heads to the eNB. It is also assumed
that the M2M devices have periodic and static traffic, each
M2M device is capable of being a cluster head, each M2M
device has only one packet to send with known transmission
power, and a specific number of sub-carriers from the eNB
are allocated to the cluster heads. Their solution is based
on a two-stage optimization. In the first one, based on the
K-means algorithm, the optimal clusters, cluster heads, and
cluster members are selected. In the second stage, the optimal
resource (e.g., sub-carrier) allocation is developed.
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13
Tu et. al. in [67] and Ho et. al. in [68], also suggest a
clustering mechanism (not for any specific cellular standard)
to decrease the power consumption. In their model, the effects
of collision and retransmissions are not considered. They
assume that all the channel coefficients are known. Then,
an optimization problem is defined to minimize the overall
power consumption when the nodes can be grouped up to a
maximum number of clusters. The solution in terms of clusters
and cluster heads are found using the K-means algorithm.
H. Strong Coding/Modulation Scheme
A new RACH procedure is suggested by Zhou et. al. in [69].
To reduce the connection establishment latency, it is suggested
to remove the first two steps of LTE RACH procedure. In
the proposed procedure, the eNB broadcasts the allocated
resources, and then the M2M devices send their data and ID
together. It is assumed that the transmission duration of data
and ID is equal to the first step of LTE RACH procedure.
To increase the probability of correct reception of IDs, it is
assumed that strong modulation and channel coding schemes
are used for ID transmission. Then with a high probability,
the transmitted ID can still be decoded even in the case of
collisions. Therefore the eNB can ask for data retransmission.
The suggested duration for the data packets is assumed to be
less than that of LTE preamble, which may not be practical
in all applications. Moreover, using strong modulation and
channel coding degrades the total throughput. Also, it is
noteworthy that preambles in the contention part of the LTE
RACH procedure are small (see section II-B), in order to
reduce the collision probability, resource wastage , etc, [41].
I. predictive uplink resource allocation
A predictive scheduling for uplink resource allocation is
suggested by Brown and Khan in [70]. In LTE after a
device has established connection by RACH procedure, it can
schedule the next uplink data transfer at the end of the current
data transfer. Brown and Khan suggest that if an M2M device
asks for future uplink resources, then the eNB predicts the
future requests from the neighbors of that M2M device. Then,
the appropriate uplink resources will be allocated to those
neighbors and reported to them. The proposed algorithm is
applicable to event driven M2M devices, which are in RRC-
Connected state (see section II-B). This approach is suitable
for M2M devices which do not have power limitations, such
as in Smart Grid networks.
J. Learning-based eNB Selection
Hasan et. al. in [71] suggest the access delay of M2M
devices as a QoS measure. Since in LTE networks, it is
possible for the M2M devices to be covered by more than one
eNB, the authors propose the Q-learning approach for eNB
selection based on QoS.
 Pull-based Mechanisms
The pull-based approaches are used by the M2M server in
collaboration with the cellular network in order to collect data
from M2M devices, [7], [20]. This mechanism is useful for
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Things Journal
reading the smart meters’ data [72] say in smart gird network.
While this mechanism can simply mitigate the overload issues
at RACH, it may create overload in the paging channel. The
paging channel overload is discussed in [21], [22].
Wei et. al. in [73] develop an analytical model for per-
formance evaluation of group paging in LTE. In the group
paging approach, after a number of M2M devices are paged,
they will try to access the network in a highly synchronized
manner. Moreover, after each M2M device is served, the
access probability of the other M2M devices will be changed.
Therefore the previous analysis on the throughput and access
delay cannot be used here. Wei et. al. suggest an analytical
model by including LTE specifications in: random back-off
procedure, capacity of access channel, the maximum number
of retransmissions, and the power ramping exponential law.
They show that all their analytical results are matched with
LTE system simulations.
V. DATA C HANNEL OVERLOAD
Compared to H2H devices, the size of the data for each
M2M devices is small. However, due to the massive number
of M2M devices, the aggregated traffic is noticeably large. In
this section, we describe the suggested mechanisms to handle
this new overload in cellular networks. We first review the
enhancements included in LTE-A to increase the cell capacity.
Next we review other possibilities for improving the traffic
data for M2M networks.
A. 3GPP Solutions to increase Capacity in LTE-Advanced
LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) has envisioned new techniques to
achieve higher data rates in both uplink and downlink, [74]
including:
• Carrier aggregation
• Advanced MIMO techniques
• Wireless relays
• Enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (eICIC)
• Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP) transmission/reception
1) Carrier aggregation: Carrier aggregation increases bit
rates for all users in a cell, and facilitates bursty applications.
It can be used for both FDD and TDD modes of operation,
[75], [76]. It increases the transmission bandwidth up to 100
MHz by aggregating up to five LTE carriers. This enhancement
allows to use non-contiguous carriers and to manage con-
trol channels in heterogeneous networks6 . Carrier aggregation
works in three different modes:
1) Intra-band contiguous allocation: uses up to five adjacent
carriers at the same band as shown at the top of Fig. 12.
2) Intra-band non-contiguous allocation: uses up to five
non-adjacent carriers at the same band, as shown in the
middle of Fig. 12.
3) Inter-band non-contiguous allocation: uses up to five
non-adjacent carriers at different bands, as shown at the
bottom of Fig. 12.
6 Here, heterogeneous networks refers to networks of macro-cells, micro-
cells, etc.
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14
Fig. 12. Three different models of carrier aggregation. From top to bottom:
Intra-band contiguous allocation, Intra-band non-contiguous allocation, Inter-
band non-contiguous allocation.
2) Advanced MIMO techniques: Advanced MIMO tech-
niques, [77] are suggested for LTE-A to increase the capacity.
In LTE-A higher order multi-antenna MIMO is used for down-
link and uplink channels, where in downlink both transmitter
and receiver are equipped with up to 8 antennas, and in the
uplink by up to 4 antennas. For high SNR, this number of
antennas are used for different space-time coding (MIMO
techniques), [78], and for low SNR they can be used for
diversity combining schemes, [79]. Both MIMO and diversity
combining increase the channel capacity.
3) Wireless relays: Relay Nodes are low power eNBs with
reduced functionality, [80], [81]. They are planed in the cell
to enhance the coverage and capacity at cell edges. The cell-
edge devices can be connected to the eNB via an intermediate
relay node.
4) Enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (eICIC):
Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC), [82] is used in
order to attain high spectral efficiency and to improve the
channel condition for the users under interference. The eNB
allocates a wide range of frequencies to the cell area and to
avoid interference with the adjacent cells, the eNB allocates
different frequencies to cell edges. To assure low interference
and good QoS at the edges, the eNB uses low transmission
power for areas near the center of the cell and higher trans-
mission power for the edge areas, as shown in Fig. 13. This
fact is known as Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR). In LTE
release 10, this approach has been enhanced by considering
the heterogeneous network structure, known as eICIC.
5) Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP) transmission/reception:
Due to the use of fiber optics in the back-haul network, the
latency and capacity of the links between eNBs has been
improved. This improvement enables features such as clock
synchronization and synchronous data exchanges between
eNBs. On the other hand, this allows a device to be served
by more than one eNB, which is known as Coordinated
Multi-Point (CoMP) transmission and reception, [83]. By
combining signals from multiple sources, a higher bit rate can
be achieved, and cell-edge devices can also experience a better
QoS.
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Things Journal
Fig. 13. Cellular network and resource management scheme of inter-cell
interference coordination (ICIC)
B. Recent Solutions to Enhance M2M Data Traffic in LTE
Other than enhancements in LTE-A, some other approaches
have been suggested in the literature to handle the traffic data
of M2M devices. The approaches are different in perspectives
and fall into the following categories:
• Enhancing cell-edge M2M devices
• Overhead reduction
• Cooperative broadcast
• Separate resource allocation
• Novel waveform design
• Novel multiple access schemes
• Context aware networking
1) Enhancing cell-edge M2M devices: Delgado-Luque et.
al. in [74] investigate two Inter-Cell Interference techniques,
namely Partial Frequency Reuse (PFR), and Non-precoded
Joint Transmission (non-precoded JT), [84], for cell-edged
M2M devices. In [74], a comparison of the two methods in
terms of SINR and delay for a network with ten M2M de-
vices for video surveillance monitoring shows that while PFR
outperforms non-precoded JT, both approaches can improve
both SINR and delay. Although, in a typical M2M network,
we expect a much larger number of M2M devices each with
lower data rate than a video stream.
A relaying mechanism is proposed by Andreev et. al. for
improving the packet delay and energy consumption of the
M2M nodes with poor radio links [85]. In their model, they
have sensors, data aggregators, relay, and eNBs. The data
aggregator can send the collected information from sensors
directly to the eNB or by means of a relay. By using this
mechanism, they show that packet delay between the aggre-
gators and eNB is improved in comparison with the system
with no relaying mechanism. The paper does not consider the
access mechanism between the huge number of sensors and
their aggregator.
2) Overhead reduction: Sheu et. al. suggest using the Go-
Back-N (GBN) ARQ mechanism for the downlink channel
[86]. To reduce overhead, they suggest using GBN instead of
sending an ACK for each packet. Note that, M2M applica-
tions typically do not require to download many information
packets.
A clustering based approach for reducing M2M uplink
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15
traffic congestion over cellular networks is suggested by Jung
et. al. in [87]. They consider low and periodic M2M traffic
generated by smart meters, which is needed to be delivered to
M2M server via the cellular network. In the proposed model,
each M2M device is equipped with a cellular radio as well as
a local radio. It is then suggested that a set of radios select a
cluster head to communicate with the eNB. From simulation
results, it is shown that by using this method, the overall
imposed traffic is reduced due to the fact that the overhead
volume is lowered.
3) Cooperative broadcast: A wireless system is suggested
by Laya et. al. for cooperative retransmission [88]. M2M
devices are equipped with both cellular and short-range radios.
M2M devices are grouped into different clusters based on their
short-range radios. They propose a cooperative retransmission
mechanism with two stages. At the first stage the data is
broadcast by the eNB, and in the second stage, using a
token based algorithm on the local radio network, the data
is distributed through a cluster by the nodes who received
it correctly. This paper claims that the energy efficiency
will improve as the cluster size increases. Their suggested
algorithm is only applicable to broadcast networks, and the
delay performance is not investigated. The selected power
classes for the M2M devices is a way more than the expected
ones in practice.
4) Separate resource allocation: Ide et. al. model the M2M
downlink traffic in the presence of H2H with Markovian and
ray tracing model in [89]. The QoS of downlink for UDP
protocol is analyzed. The Markov model is used for resource
allocation, in which each state is the number of used LTE’s
resource blocks. Through simulation, it is verified that the
achievable traffic per RB highly depends on the number of
dedicated RBs per user, due to additional overhead in the
transport layer protocol. They also verified that the traffic load
and H2H’s blocking probability increases with the arrival rate
of M2M.
In [90], Ide et. al. propose the so-called Channel Aware
Transmission (CAT) method. In this method a user calculate
the SNR of its channel to eNB using a ray tracing model, and
then the transmission probability is calculated by using the
following equation
α

SNR
p= (2)
SNRmax
where α controls the data rate. Then the user transmits with
probability p. This is a simple and effective method to increase
the channel utilization.
In [91], CAT is extend accounting for the importance of the
data by setting

 1 for most time-critical situations


SNR
 α2
p= situations with medium priority (3)
  SNRmax α3
 SNR

for non-time-critical situations
SNRmax
where α2 < α3 . In this way, the data with higher priority is
sent sooner.
For uplink scheduling, Lioumpas and Alexiou propose two
scheduling mechanisms in order to allocate resources for the
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Things Journal
uplink channel [92]. They suggest to assign the resource blocks
to H2H devices first, and then the remaining RBs are assigned
to M2M devices by using two different methods. In the first
method, for each RB, the M2M devices are sorted based on the
SNRs. If the device with best SNR is delay sensitive, then that
RB will be allocated to it. In the second approach, the M2M
devices are sorted according to the tolerable delay and the
device with lowest delay gets the RB with the best SNR. The
main issue for these method is that the eNB should estimate
the SNR for each individual device over all the RBs.
Delgado-Luque et. al. in [74] apply and evaluate three
different scheduling schemes previously proposed by [93]–
[96] in LTE up-link traffic Channel. In Opportunistic Hard
Priority (OHP), which is proposed in [93], [94], as long as
the packet delays are under a threshold, a uniform priority is
allocated to all packets. Otherwise, the more delay sensitive
packets will be served sooner. The other algorithm, Channel
Dependent Earliest Deadline Due (CD-EDD), suggested in
[95], combines a channel dependent term with delay to pro-
duce a priority label for each packet. Finally, as a modification
to the previous method, in CD-EDD with postponed EDD
term, as suggested in [96], the dominance of the channel
dependence term has been increased. In [97], it is shown that
all scheduling schemes outperform the non-scheduled system.
While the delay performance improves in low SNRs, it is
shown that the latter algorithm has a better performance in
all SNRs.
Zhenqi et. al. in [98] define two sets: set 1 includes H2H
devices and delay-sensitive M2M devices, and set 2 includes
delay-insensitive M2M devices. Through timing scheduling,
the eNB first serves set 1 in a long duration and then it serves
set 2 in a shorter duration. Although, if there is no more traffic
from set 1, then the eNB serves set 2 in the first interval. In
detail, they define a metric to measure the QoS that each RB
can provide for each device. They first assign the RBs to set
1 according to each device’s metric and after serving them ,
they similarly serve set 2. In the numerical result, they show
that the proposed method decreases the delay while keeping
the throughput fixed.
A customized packet scheduling (PS) algorithm of LTE
for M2M devices is proposed by Gotsis et. al. in [92] with
including three considerations: specific traffic model, queue
awareness, and clustering. In their proposed mechanism, they
modeled M2M traffic by Poisson process, let the eNBs be
aware of the queue length at each M2M devices, and classify
the M2M devices into limited number of groups. It is note-
worthy that this approach is a good fit for event-driven M2M
applications and not for polling.
Off-peak transfer approach is suggested by Kitahara et. al.
in [99]. They try to shift the delay-insensitive traffic of M2M
devices to the off-peak hours, which helps to distribute the
traffic more uniformly during a day. They suggest an adaptive
approach which is implemented on each M2M devices rather
than eNBs. In their algorithm, each day is divided to specific
number of time slots, and then each node evaluates the
throughput of its working time slot. If the throughput is not
good enough, it will move to a new time slot for the next
data transmission. The algorithm’s convergence, speed, and
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16
its imposed computational complexity on each node are not
investigated.
Abdalla and Venkatesan in [100] propose two separate
resource unit (RU) allocation in LTE uplink channel, such
that specific percentage of resources dedicated for H2H users
and the remainder for M2M devices. They propose to allocate
resources base on the QoS requirements.
Shin and Triwicaksono suggest an adaptive RB allocation
for H2H and M2M devices in LTE network [101]. They also
compared their algorithm with two previously suggested algo-
rithm for resource allocation. In proportional fair algorithm,
the eNBs assign the resources based on the channel quality
feedback from nodes. In round robin (RR) based algorithms,
the eNBs do not consider any quality feedback from nodes,
and schedule the resources in a fixed pattern. While these
two allocation methods are fair, their resource allocations
is not optimum. In the proposed algorithm in [101], the
number of unoccupied RB by H2H devices, are adaptively
dedicated to M2M nodes. The simulation results show that this
algorithm improves the peak throughput, while achievement in
the average throughput performance is small.
5) Novel waveform design: As mentioned in Section II,
OFDMA is used in the downlink of LTE to allocate a subset
of subcarriers to each user. To avoid intercarrier interference
(ICI) in OFDMA, the signals from different users must be
synchronized at the receiver input. This is easily achieved in
the downlink since all the subcarriers are transmitted from
the same point (eNB) and they undergo the same Doppler fre-
quency shift before reaching each user. However, synchroniza-
tion is not trivial in the uplink where signals are transmitted
from a number of geographically distributed mobile users7 . In
the absence of perfect synchronization, ICI occurs and results
in significant system performance degradation. For this reason
OFDMA is not used in LTE uplink.
ICI in OFDMA is particularly detrimental due to the
high sidelobe levels in subcarrier spectrum which extend
to a wide frequency band. To overcome this effect, filter-
bank based multicarrier systems have been proposed where
prototype filters are designed to ensure much lower sidelobe
levels. The universal filtered multicarrier (UFMC) and filter
bank multicarrier (FBMC) introduced in [102], [103] and
[104], respectively, reduce the out-of-band sidelobe levels
and minimize the effects of ICI between adjacent users.
UFMC and FBMC provide a number of advantages over LTE
waveform including good spectrum containment, increased
spectral efficiency, relaxed synchronization requirements and
compatibility with LTE pilot pattern and MIMO modes.
6) Novel multiple access schemes: The requirements of an
extremely high number of connected devices and low end-to-
end latency are not easily achieved through LTE. Therefore,
in addition to the physical layer enhancements, the multiple
access scheme also needs to be improved. Multi-user MIMO
(MU-MIMO) has already extended the multiplexing space
into the spatial domain. Two other candidates proposed for
multiplexing are the power domain and the code domain. One
promising approach is to relax the orthogonality of OFDMA
7 The signals may undergo different Doppler frequency shifts and may also
have different carrier frequency offsets.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JIOT.2016.2533541, IEEE Internet of
Things Journal
from the multiple access perspective. Non-orthogonal multiple
access (NOMA) multiplexes users in the power domain by
exploiting the channel gain difference among different users
in the cellular network. This approach can enhance the tech-
nology of macro cells [105] and can be combined with MU-
MIMO to increase spectral efficiency and also the cell-edge
throughput. Sparse Code Multiple Access (SCMA) [106] is
another promising approach to increase the throughput by
providing code multiplexing on top of power multiplexing.
7) Context aware networking: Using a small side informa-
tion known as data context can enhance the network through-
put. The context can be information on a device location and
prediction of its future location, QoS requirements, and/or data
size. This side information can help the network to adapt the
resource allocation, solve the mobility related issues, reduce
call drops and improve combined M2M and H2H traffic issues
[107], and also alleviate backhaul management issues [108].
VI. C ORE N ETWORK OVERLOAD
Other than RAN issues raised by massive number of M2M
devices, Core Network (CN) is also prone to be affected. An
analyze of the congestion issue of M2M in the LTE’s CN is
investigated by Yang et. al. in [109], by considering M/G/k/k
queuing system model for Poisson arrival M2M process. An
approach similar to ACB is suggested by Ksentini et. al.
for controlling the CN congestion [110]. In this method, the
barring factor is adjusted using a PID controller, in which data
queue in core notwork is always compared with a reference
value. To prevent and control congestion in Core Network
(CN) the previous RACH control mechanisms like ACB,
EAB, slotted access, etc can be used though there are a few
approaches proposed for congestion in the CN.
A. Extended Wait Timer
When eNB notified the traffic overload in CN, it can use
an extended wait time scheme to inform user equipment with
low priority or delay insensitive traffic not to request within
an specific period of time, [111]–[113]. The extended wait
time is an enhancement to defer channel access by UEs,
[114]. [113] suggests to use passive or active mechanisms for
applying extended wait time to the relevant user equipment. In
passive mechanism a connection request is rejected in RACH
procedure, or a message to release the dedicated resources
is send to the relevant UEs, and a waiting time is assigned in
which the UEs should not send a request. In active mechanism,
once CN overload happens, the eNB broadcast a waiting time
information over the network. Then the UEs with low priority
and delay insensitive traffic waits until after the waiting time.
A randomization maybe applied to the wait time to avoid
collision for the upcoming access attempts. This randomization
can be achieved using the timers for ACB which is already
considered in LTE, [115]. A delay tolerant indicator can be
used for determining the delay sensitive devices.
B. Traffic Rate Allocation for Different eNBs
Yao et. al. look at the problem of rate allocation in a network
of eNBs. In this network, each eNB, i, can serve up to a
2327-4662 (c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
17
specific rate µi [116]. Then they formulate the problem of
allocation the incoming rate, λi (≤ µi ), for eNB i to maximize
the total incoming rate in the networks of eNBs subject to
a constraint defined as incoming rate cost. Their analysis is
based on modeling each eNB as M/M/1 queue. They verified
that increasing the incoming rate (average waiting time in
queue) increases delay and cost.
C. Session Management Back-off
3GPP classifies the M2M devices based on their service
priorities [117]. The priority level of each device is determined
by the manufacturer or the M2M operator. When an M2M
device registers its location in the Mobility Management
Entity (MME), its priority identifier will be sent to Serving
Gateway (SGW) and Packet Data Network Gateway (PDN-
GW). Later, this information is used for packet scheduling and
also for congestion control, using a back-off scheme. When
a large number of UEs attempt to communicate via eNB,
the mobile core network aggregating the eNBs’ traffic may
experience congestion due to the high load. To resolve this
congestion, a back-off mechanism is developed by 3GPP in
which when a UE sends a Service Request message to the
core network after establishing the RRC connection, MME
sends a Service reject to the UE with a back-off timer value.
The back-off time is set according to the priority level of
the M2M devices. The M2M device is not allowed to initiate
any mobility management procedures until the timer expires,
except for emergency services. This control mechanism is used
to alleviate congestion at the SGW and PDN-GW and is known
as session management back-off (SM Back-off).
VII. C ONCLUSION
In this survey we investigated the issues imposed by M2M
communication on cellular networks, specially LTE and LTE-
A networks. We briefly reviewed the LTE networks in terms
of frame structure, downlink and uplink physical channels,
random access request mechanism, and the LTE MAC sched-
uler. Next, we investigated M2M traffic models and the effect
of synchronized/coordinated traffic on access channels. Then
the simulation models for M2M traffic access requests are
presented.
The first major problem imposed by M2M communication
is the overload in the access channel. We investigated the
proposed solutions, their advantages and disadvantages and the
remaining challenges for this problem, including access class
Barring scheme, back-off scheme, slotted access, opportunistic
access, separate resource allocation, group-based approaches,
energy-saving access mechanisms, strong coding/modulation
scheme, predictive uplink resource allocation, and learning-
based eNB selection. We described each of these schemes and
any possible modifications in details. The comparisons among
these methods were also presented.
The second major problem imposed by M2M communi-
cation is the overload in the data channel. We investigated
the 3GPP proposed technologies to increase the capacity in
LTE and LTE-Advanced including carrier aggregation, ad-
vanced MIMO techniques, wireless relays, enhanced inter-
cell interference, coordination (eICIC), coordinated multipoint
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JIOT.2016.2533541, IEEE Internet of
Things Journal
(CoMP) transmission/reception. enhancing cell-edge M2M de-
vices, overhead reduction, cooperative broadcast, and separate
resource allocation.
Finally, the core network overload was investigated and the
solutions including extended wait timer and different traffic
rate allocation for different eNBs were explained.
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Erfan Soltanmohammadi (S12, M15) was born in
Karaj, Iran, in 1984. He received his BSc in electri-
cal engineering from K.N. Toosi University of Tech-
nology (KNTU), Tehran, Iran, in 2007, MSc from
Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT), Tehran,
Iran, in 2010, and PhD degree in systems (commu-
nication & signal processing) from Louisiana State
University (LSU), Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA, in
2014. He is currently a DSP engineer at Marvell
Semiconductor, Inc., Santa Clara, California, USA.
He received George Reymond scholarship from LSU
in 2013, and was awarded as one of the top 100 engineers at Marvell
Semiconductor, Inc. in 2015. His research interests include signal processing,
machine learning, and wireless communications.
Kamran Ghavami received his B.Sc. and M.S. in
electrical engineering from the University of Tehran
in 1998 and 2000 respectively. Upon the completion
of his M.Sc. degree, he conducted research and
implementation of telecommunication systems as a
research engineer at NRI, where he participated in
several related projects. In January 2013, he started
his Ph.D. program at Louisiana State University. His
research interests include channel coding, iterative
detection, and MIMO wireless systems.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JIOT.2016.2533541, IEEE Internet of
Things Journal

21

Mort Naraghi-Pour (S81-M87, SM13) received his

B.Sc. degree from Tehran University, Tehran, Iran in
1977 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, in 1983 and 1987, respectively. In 1978,
he was awarded a one-year postgraduate scholar-
ship by Philips International Institute, Eindhoven,
The Netherlands, where he also conducted research
with the Telecommunication Switching Group of
the Philips Research Laboratories. Since August
1987, he has been with the School of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge,
where he is currently the Michel B. Voorhies Distinguished Professor of
Electrical Engineering. From June 2000 to January 2002, he was a Senior
Member of Technical Staff at Celox Networks, Inc., a network equipment
manufacturer in St. Louis, MO. Dr. Naraghi-Pour received the best paper
award from WINSYS 2007 for a paper co-authored with his student, Dr.
X. Gao. Dr. Naraghi-Pours research and teaching interests include wireless
communications, broadband networks, information theory, and coding. He has
served as a Session Organizer, Session Chair, and member of the Technical
Program Committee for numerous national and international conferences.

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