Recent Advancements in M2M Communications in 4G Networks and Evolution Towards 5G
Recent Advancements in M2M Communications in 4G Networks and Evolution Towards 5G
Recent Advancements in M2M Communications in 4G Networks and Evolution Towards 5G
Access Network (GERAN) as a baseline for evaluations [12]. Based on the studies done in [12]-[14], 3GPP have
There is significant interest from network operators on this standardized or is in the process of standardizing the features
topic, due to the potential of provisioning new and innovative shown in Table I.
services for the end users. This is the main motivation behind The features listed ensure that LTE can meet M2M
active research and standardization currently ongoing for this requirements of low-cost devices, ubiquitous coverage, and
topic. The performance evaluations are also done based on the ultra-long battery life [18]. To support coexistence of human
LTE capacity for different M2M device types, and the and machine traffic, service differentiation can be handled by
overhead caused to the system in general, rather than various techniques. They include, for example, time-
analyzing the M2M traffic characteristics alone, as done in [6]. controlled access of M2M devices including access grant time
Also, the various delay requirements and packet loss metrics and forbidden time interval, and limiting services to M2M
of the M2M traffic is considered to be outside the scope of devices if their behavior is not aligned with M2M features.
this work. Scheduling prioritization (e.g., through modifying the
Currently, significant amount of research is ongoing for scheduling metric based on User Equipment (UE) category)
finding potential system enhancements that would be required and semi-persistent scheduling to reduce overhead can also be
for handling the increase in data rate requirements for 5G used. Using these techniques, the network is able to minimize
cellular systems. The coexistence of human-centric and the impact from machine traffic to human traffic.
machine type communications is anticipated to lead to a TABLE I. LTE FEATURES FOR M2M SERVICES
diverse set of communication characteristics in such systems
[7]. Various scenarios and requirements for 5G systems LTE Release Feature
currently being studied, and the vision of the METIS project
are presented in [7]. The support for massive MTC type Rel-11 • UE power preference indication
(2012) • RAN overload control
device deployment, sustaining a minimal data rate, with
possibly low latency requirements, is considered in [8] as a • Low-cost UE category (Cat-0)
potentially disruptive technology leading to architectural and Rel-12 • Power saving mode for UE
(2014) • UE assistance information for eNB
component design changes in 5G systems.
parameter tuning
The work done in [9] proposes new physical layer
technology components for 5G such as unified frame structure, Rel-13
• Low-cost UE category
multicarrier waveform design, etc., enabling transmissions • Coverage enhancement
(expected 2016)
• Power saving enhancement
with low latency. A flexible OpenAirInterface platform is
presented in [10], which takes new approaches and A. Low-Cost Devices
technologies currently being considered for 5G systems such
as cloud RAN, application of software defined networking One key requirement for supporting M2M in LTE is the
principles, massive multi-antenna techniques, full-duplex availability of low cost devices. Typical LTE devices have
communication, etc. Performance evaluations based on been designed to provide broadband services. For example,
massive MTC deployments is also considered in the work. the least capable LTE device, called Category-1 device, has 2
One of the key application requirements considered in the receive antennas, RF bandwidth of 20 MHz, and can support
system design was the provisioning of IoT with dense data rates of 10 Mbps in the downlink and 5 Mbps in the
deployment of MTC devices. In this work, we also look at the uplink. This makes them overdesigned for low-rate and delay-
new and diverse set of requirements and scenarios currently tolerant M2M services. In Rel-12, low-cost M2M devices with
being considered for 5G systems, and the drivers behind such reduced capabilities have been introduced. This new device
enhancements. category (called Category-0 device) have the following
The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section II reduced capabilities –
gives an overview of the LTE enhancements for M2M • One receive (Rx) antenna and associated receiver
currently being studied. Section III discusses the performance chain.
analysis using the proposed enhancements. The possible 5G • Reduced peak data rates of 1 Mbps in downlink and
scenarios, requirements and enhancements for M2M uplink.
communication is presented in Section IV. Section V gives the • Optional half-duplex FDD operation.
conclusions of the paper. For Rel-13, a new device category with even lower
II. LTE ENHANCEMENTS FOR M2M complexity will be defined. Based on Rel-12 Category-0
device, this new device category will have further reduced
LTE radio access network enhancements for M2M capabilities as follows –
communications have been studied by 3GPP in [11]-[14]. • Reduced device RF bandwidth of 1.4 MHz in both
These enhancements address the issues of overload control, downlink and uplink.
network support for M2M devices, device cost reduction, • Reduced maximum transmit power to allow for an
power saving for ultra-long battery life, signaling overhead, integrated Power Amplifier (PA) implementation –
and coverage enhancement. Illustrative coverage and capacity e.g. 20 dBm compared to 23 dBm for the baseline
analysis for M2M on LTE have been provided in [15]-[17]. LTE device.
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2015 18th International Conference on Intelligence in Next Generation Networks
Table II provides a comparison of the different LTE FDD • 1 Rx antenna will lead to approximately 4 dB
device categories. The modem complexity relative to degradation in performance of the downlink channels.
Category-1 device is also provided in the table. Complexity This is due to lack of receiver combining and diversity
reduction can be used to estimate the reduction in the bill-of- gain.
materials (BoM) cost of the modem. Using Category-1 device • Reduced maximum transmit power will lead to a
as the baseline, reducing the device RF bandwidth to 1.4 MHz corresponding degradation in coverage of the uplink
provides a cost reduction of approximately 39 %. Together channels.
with peak rate reduction to 1 Mbps and a single RF antenna, • Reduced UE bandwidth of 1.4 MHz in downlink and
the complexity reduction is approximately 59%. Half-duplex uplink can lead to degradation in performance due to
operation provides another 7 – 10 % complexity reduction, lack of diversity gain. It has been estimated that this
while maximum power reduction will provide 2 – 7 % cost results in approximately 1 – 3 dB loss in performance.
reduction (assuming integrated PA). All together, the Table IV lists the required coverage enhancement amounts in
techniques can provide 68 - 76 % reduction in BoM cost of dB for different channels to reach 155.7 dB MCL for different
the modem. Thus, the modem cost of the Rel-13 FDD low- device categories. Note that a maximum transmit power of 20
cost device is expected to be approximately 25 % of the FDD dBm is assumed for Rel-13 low-cost devices.
Category-1 modem. TABLE IV. REQUIRED COVERAGE ENHANCEMENT
TABLE II. LTE FDD DEVICE COMPARISON
PSS/SSS
EPDCCH
PUCCH
PRACH
PUSCH
PDSCH
PBCH
Rel-8 Rel-8 Rel-12 Rel-13
Device Capability Device
Cat-4 Cat-1 Cat-0 Low-cost
Downlink peak rate 150 Mbps 10 Mbps 1 Mbps 1 Mbps
Uplink peak rate 50 Mbps 5 Mbps 1 Mbps 1 Mbps
Category-1 8.5 14.0 15.0 10.3 6.7 9.6 6.4
Max No of downlink
2 1 1 1
spatial layers
Category-0 8.5 14.0 15.0 14.3 10.7 10.4 10.4
Number of device RF
2 2 1 1
receiver chains Rel-13
11.5 17.0 18.0 16.9 10.7 10.4 10.4
Full Full Half Half Low-cost
Duplex mode
Duplex Duplex (Optional) (Optional)
TABLE V. POTENTIAL COVERAGE ENHANCEMENT TECHNIQUES
Device bandwidth 20 MHz 20 MHz 20 MHz 1.4 MHz
Max Tx power 23 dBm 23 dBm 23 dBm ~20 dBm
PSS/SSS
EPDCCH
PUCCH
PRACH
PUSCH
PDSCH
PBCH
Modem complexity Technique
125% 100% 50% 25%
relative to Cat-1
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2015 18th International Conference on Intelligence in Next Generation Networks
Note that coverage enhancement will be scalable and information will help the network configure radio resource
configurable, with the aim to minimize the amount of parameters appropriately. For example, for device with
reception and transmission time for each device. A infrequent data transmission, the eNB can configure the
mechanism to identify coverage range will be needed so that inactive timer to enable fast connection release.
the device can be configured for appropriate coverage
III. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
enhancement amount.
In this section, we present LTE capacity results for some
C. Device Power Saving
M2M services. The analysis will consider M2M deployment
Two important features have been introduced in LTE to in two simulated system deployments – urban and suburban
help reduce power consumption – power preference indication macro-cell deployment. The inter-site distance is 500 m and
and power saving mode. Power preference indication allows 1732 m for urban and suburban scenarios, respectively. The
the device to indicate to the network that it prefers a low- macro-cell system simulation scenario is of a traditional 57-
power consumption mode of operation. The network may then cell system setup (19 sites, each with 3 sectors) with wrap-
configure radio resource parameters appropriately such as around. Devices are randomly placed within each cell as
reduced measurements and longer sleep time to minimize shown in Fig. 1. Relevant simulation parameters are listed in
device power consumption. In Rel-12, a power saving mode Table VII.
was introduced. In this state, the UE remains registered to but TABLE VI. LTE CAPACITY PER PRB FOR M2M SERVICES
not reachable by the network for mobile terminating (i.e.
downlink) traffic. The UE can be viewed to be in the power- Message
Capacity
Transaction (devices per PRB)
off or sleep mode, and will wake up only when there is data to Application Size Period
send or after timer expiration. This mode is intended for UEs (Bytes) (Seconds) Urban Suburban
with infrequent mobile-originated data transmission. It is well
suited for M2M services with timed transmissions such as Smart
2017 9000 7.5e4 5.6e4
Meter
remote sensing and smart grid.
Health
128 60 5.3e3 4.0e3
Sensor
Home
3000 20 600 1.2e5 9.2e4
Security
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2015 18th International Conference on Intelligence in Next Generation Networks
uplink transmission. Each PRB occupies 180 kHz bandwidth these type of devices are characterized by low bit rate
and there are 50 PRBs available in a 10MHz system. requirements, low cost and low power consumption (e.g. 10
years battery life with “AA” battery), but with a massive
From the table, it can be seen that the LTE capacity for
deployment.
M2M services is very high. In a suburban environment, the
For high category/mission critical MTC, automotive,
average number of homes in a cell has been estimated to be
industry automation and robot control are among the most
between 4,647 and 10,456. If each home is assumed to have 3
important new areas which bring more stringent Quality of
smart meters (water, gas, electricity), it can be estimated from
Service requirements in terms of latency, scalability and
Table VI that less than one PRB (corresponding to 2 %
reliability as compared to traditional cellular services.
overhead for a 10 MHz system) will be required to support
Similarly, mission critical communications, which can help
smart meter service.
first responders work safer, smarter and faster in disasters and
IV. M2M COMMUNICATION IN 5G day-to-day incidents, have similar requirements as well.
Current wireless communication systems such as 2G, 3G,
It is predicted that in 2020 the total number of connected 4G (for e.g. LTE, LTE-A), or the IEEE ITS-G5 specification
devices will be about 50 billion [7], almost double comparing based on the 802.11p standard cannot satisfy the requirements
to today’s number. A significant portion of the increase is
of the most demanding automotive safety services. The QoS
expected from the machine type communications. Naturally,
level to be provided with 5G system need to meet the
the development of 5G technologies would need to take this
requirements resulting from future highly automated driving
key factor into account, apart from the enhancements
and future industry Internet and go well beyond what can be
currently being proposed for LTE-A systems. International achieved with any wireless communication technology today.
Telecommunication Union Radio-communication Standards The most important requirements for M2M communication in
Sector (ITU-R) is preparing its vision for the overall
5G systems currently being studied are [21], [22], [23]:
objectives for systems beyond 2020 [19]. Based on the market,
• Maximum allowable end-to-end latency, including
traffic and future spectrum requirements work done, M2M
jitter/retransmits less than 5ms.
communications is considered to be a key element in future
• Reliability, for example packet loss rate 10-9 or 99.999%.
systems.
The possible evolution of Mobile BroadBand (MBB) from While the performance measurements and key performance
IMT-2000 and IMT-Advanced towards 2020 and beyond is as indices of such requirements are challenging, one of the key
shown in Fig. 2 [20], based on the assumption that the traffic considerations is the probability of avoidance of undesired
requirements would be increased by a thousand times over the events. For Massive Machine Communications (MMC), three
next decade. Conventional MBB is expected to be replaced by different radio access types are also envisioned in [20]:(1)
extreme MBB (xMBB), which provides new services such as direct access (MMC-D) to the access network, with
virtual and augmented reality, higher resolutions, 3D TV, accumulation/aggregation point, (2) (MMC-A) which
improved quality of experience and smart content delivery. accumulates the traffic locally and send it to the access point,
The new use cases to be considered in such systems include and (3) direct M2M communication (MMC-M) between MTC
massive and ultra-reliable MTC. devices using for e.g. D2D communication. The performance
requirements for such communication are assumed to be more
relaxed with data delivery having slightly higher delay
constraints. The key consideration would be on providing
efficient access and optimized scheduling for such devices.
V. CONCLUSIONS
Machine-to-Machine communication, with its capability of
providing diverse set of applications and services, is
considered to be a key technology enhancement for 4G LTE-
Advanced systems, and is anticipated to maintain its
dominance in 5G systems as well. In this work, we study in
detail the various system enhancements for LTE-Advanced
Fig. 2. Evolution of current MBB services towards beyond-2020 [20].
systems, such as reducing the device cost, coverage
enhancement, device power saving and network control and
Due to the diverse set of MTC use cases and scenarios, two tuning. Detailed performance analysis using LTE system
different flavors should be investigated in the future 5G settings is also done, mainly to evaluate the LTE capacity for
system design: (1) low cost/low power consumption massive various MTC device types. Based on the evaluations done, it
MTC (i.e. low category/massive MTC), and (2) mission was shown that LTE can offer high capacity for MTC traffic.
critical MTC (i.e. high category/ultra-reliable MTC), where Possible system enhancements, requirements and scenarios for
latency and reliability are key elements to be considered. M2M communication in 5G systems is also discussed, with
For low category/massive MTC, utility (e.g. electricity/gas/ further elaborations done on massive and ultra-reliable or
water) metering is one of the typical usage cases. Generally, mission-critical MTC anticipated in such systems. The
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2015 18th International Conference on Intelligence in Next Generation Networks
performance requirements in terms of latency and reliability re," IEEE 77th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), pp.1-5,
June 2013.
are also discussed.
[17] Ratasuk, R., Zhang, Y., Lei, D., Mangalvedhe, N., and Ghosh, A,
Future directions could include defining the requirements, "Coverage Enhancement for M2M Communications using LTE,"
and evaluating the performance of 5G systems with International Conference on Telecommunications, May 2014.
deployment of massive and ultra-reliable MTC devices. [18] Nokia, “Nokia LTE M2M: Optimizing LTE for the Internet of Things,”
White Paper, 2014.
Evaluations based on more realistic traffic models for each of
[19] ITU-R M. [IMT.VISION], “IMT Vision — Framework and Overall
the MTC device or application type would also be an Objectives of the Future Development of IMT for 2020 and Beyond,”
interesting area for further work. ITU Working Document 5D/TEMP/224-E, July 2013.
[20] Popovski, P., et al. "Deliverable D6.3 Intermediate System Evaluation
ACKNOWLEDGMENT Results," ICT-317669-METIS/D6.3, Aug. 2014.
[21] Popovski, P., et al. "Deliverable D1.1 Scenarios, requirements and
Part of this work has been performed in the framework of KPIs for 5G mobile and wireless system," ICT-317669-METIS/D1.1,
the FP7 project ICT-317669 METIS, which is partly funded April 2013.
by the European Union. The authors would like to [22] ETSI, TR 102 889-2, Part 2: Technical characteristics for SRD equip-
ment for wireless industrial applications using technologies different
acknowledge the contributions of their colleagues in METIS, from Ultra-Wide Band (UWB), Aug. 2011.
although the views expressed are those of the authors and do [23] Madueño, G.C., Stefanovic, C., and Popovski, P., "Reliable Reporting
not necessarily represent the project. for Massive M2M Communications With Periodic Resource Pooling,"
IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 3, no.4, pp. 429-432, Aug.
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