Evaluation of M2M Data Traffic Aggregation in LTE-A Uplink

Inhalt:
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication is the communication between two or more devices which communicate with each other autonomously. The concept of mobile M2M communication has emerged due to the wide range, coverage provisioning and decreasing costs of future mobile networks. Consequently, M2M traffic poses significant challenges to mobile networks, especially due to the expected large group of devices with frequent small data transmissions. As a result, cellular-based M2M traffic could potentially degrade the performance of traditional cellular traffic due to inefficient utilization of the limited frequency spectrum. In this paper, a novel data aggregation scheme is proposed and analyzed for uplink M2M traffic in LTE-A (Long-Term-Evolution-Advanced) networks. For this purpose, an LTE-A layer 3 Inband RN (Relay Node) is used to aggregate uplink M2M traffic by sharing the PRBs (Physical Resource Blocks) among various devices. The proposed data aggregation scheme is validated through extensive computer simulations in an LTE-A implementation for the OPNET Modeler simulator.