Power-Efficient Random Access Design for Machine Type Communication

Abstract

Machine type communication (MTC) is the key solution to the information exchange between devices. It is the fundamental part of the Internet of Things (IoT). MTC is quite different from the human type communication (HTC), as most of the MTC applications have low requirements on data rate and latency. However, the battery life or the power consumption are very critical to MTC. Therefore, one of the most important issues involving MTC is to provide an efficient method for an MTC device to access the cellular network due to the fact that the data transmission is triggered by the device in some MTC scenarios. We address the issues in the traditional random access procedure in the LTE system and propose a power-efficient random access signal design for MTC. We analyze the bandwidth selection under different coverage requirements and propose an effective bandwidth concept to enable a power optimized random access signal design for MTC.