A Multistage Control Mechanism for Group-Based Machine-Type Communications in an LTE System

Abstract

When machine-type communication (MTC) devices perform the long-term evolution (LTE) attach procedure without bit rate limitations, they may produce congestion in the core network. To prevent this congestion, the LTE standard suggests using group-based policing to regulate the maximum bit rate of all traffic generated by a group of MTC devices. However, previous studies on the access point name-aggregate maximum bit rate based on group-based policing are relatively limited. This study proposes a multistage control (MSC) mechanism to process the operations of maximum bit rate allocation based on resource-use information. For performance evaluation, this study uses a Markov chain with $M/G/k/k$ to analyze MTC application in a 3GPP network. Traffic flow simulations in an LTE system indicate that the MSC mechanism is an effective bandwidth allocation method in an LTE system with MTC devices. Experimental results show that the MSC mechanism achieves a throughput 22.5% higher than that of the LTE standard model using the group-based policing, and it achieves a lower delay time and greater long-term fairness as well.