A Survey of MTC Traffic Models in Cellular Network

Abstract

Machine-Type Communicating (MTC) Devices (MTCD) are usually wireless devices, for example, sensors, actuators and smart metres which can talk with each other through exchanging data and take decisions with little or no human intervention. Cellular networks are considered to be one of the best technologies for accommodating MTC. The characteristics generated by MTC traffic are completely different from Human-to-Human (H2H) communications. There will be no control on the increasing number of MTCDs and because of which volume of MTC traffic keeps on increasing. In this paper, we make a comprehensive survey on MTC traffic issues over cellular network and solutions to improve the MTC over cellular network. This paper provides a brief overview of 3GPP standards supporting MTC. We also survey MTC traffic issues in heterogeneous networks consisting of cellular networks, capillary networks. Finally, we review recent standard activities and discuss the open issues and research challenges.