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Massive Machine-Type Communications towards 6G
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Massive Machine-Type Communications towards 6G

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Communications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2022) | Viewed by 13265

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Andrea Munari

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute for Communications and Navigation, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Wessling, Germany
Interests: wireless networking; machine-type communications; (beyond)-5G systems; grant-free access; satellite communications
Dr. Dejan Vukobratovic

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia
Interests: wireless communication systems; Beyond-5G systems; massive machine-type communications
Dr. Nurul Huda Mahmood

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Center for Wireless Communications (CWC), University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland
Interests: beyond 5G/6G wireless systems; industrial IoT; machine type communications; URLLC
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As the steadily increasing number of 5G deployments around the world is rendering fifth-generation wireless networks a reality, the attention of the research community is focused on the evolution that will characterize the next decade, shaping the vision for 6G. Massive machine-type communications (mMTC) will be a cornerstone of such systems, enabling the interconnection of an unprecedented number of devices to support a multitude of IoT services on a global scale, thanks to a synergy of terrestrial and non-terrestrial network components. Applications in this blooming field are characterized by a myriad of devices which access the communication infrastructure sporadically, generating short packets (e.g., to report metering or tracking information) that have to be delivered, exploiting the available spectrum resources efficiently, even in the absence of coordination. Future mMTC applications will demand substantially better reliability and lower latency, as well as further improvements on device localization, especially in indoor environments, to support novel location-based services. From this standpoint, mMTC pose novel and unique system design challenges, calling for profound innovations at all layers of the communications stack that span, among many others, signal detection, coding for short packets, and advanced grant-free access protocols. While significant results have been obtained in this direction, further research is needed to support the evolution of IoT services towards 6G.

This Special Issue of Sensors aims at stimulating novel contributions on the topic and collecting state-of-the-art research papers that help shape the evolution of mMTC in next-generation systems.

Dr. Andrea Munari
Dr. Dejan Vukobratovic
Dr. Nurul Huda Mahmood
Guest Editors

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Fundamental limits of communications for short packets 
  • Energy and bandwidth efficient grant-free based solutions for beyond 5G systems 
  • PHY and MAC solutions for satellite IoT systems 
  • Information freshness performance and optimization in mMTC systems 
  • Novel localization technologies for mMTC systems 
  • Simultaneous power and information transfer for IoT systems 
  • Enablers for critical mMTC

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 2953 KiB  
Article
Performance Analysis of NB-IoT Uplink in Low Earth Orbit Non-Terrestrial Networks
by Min-Gyu Kim and Han-Shin Jo
Sensors 2022, 22(18), 7097; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22187097 - 19 Sep 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 4969
Abstract
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) over non-terrestrial networks (NTN) is the most promising candidate technology supporting 5G massive machine-type communication. Compared to geostationary earth orbit, low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication has the advantage of low propagation [...] Read more.
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) over non-terrestrial networks (NTN) is the most promising candidate technology supporting 5G massive machine-type communication. Compared to geostationary earth orbit, low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication has the advantage of low propagation loss, but suffers from high Doppler shift. The 3GPP proposes Doppler shift pre-compensation for each beam region of the satellite. However, user equipment farther from the beam center has significant residual Doppler shifts even after pre-compensation, which degrades link performance. This study proposes residual Doppler shift compensation by adding demodulation reference signal symbols and reducing satellite beam coverage. The block error rate (BLER) data are obtained using link-level simulation with the proposed technique. Since the communication time provided by a single LEO satellite moving fast is short, many LEO satellites are necessary for seamless 24-h communication. Therefore, with the BLER data, we analyze the link budget for actual three-dimensional orbits with a maximum of 162 LEO satellites. We finally investigate the effect of the proposed technique on performance metrics such as the per-day total service time and maximum persistent service time, considering the number of satellites and the satellite spacing. The results show that a more prolonged and continuous communication service is possible with significantly fewer satellites using the proposed technique. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Massive Machine-Type Communications towards 6G)
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19 pages, 553 KiB  
Article
Analytical Model of ALOHA and Time- and Frequency-Asynchronous ALOHA with Forward Error Correction for IoT Systems
by Federico Clazzer and Marcel Grec
Sensors 2022, 22(10), 3741; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22103741 - 14 May 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2246
Abstract
The blooming of internet of things (IoT) services calls for a paradigm shift in the design of communications systems. Short data packets sporadically transmitted by a multitude of low-cost low-power terminals require a radical change in relevant aspects of the protocol stack. For [...] Read more.
The blooming of internet of things (IoT) services calls for a paradigm shift in the design of communications systems. Short data packets sporadically transmitted by a multitude of low-cost low-power terminals require a radical change in relevant aspects of the protocol stack. For example, scheduling-based approaches may become inefficient at the medium access (MAC) layer, and alternatives such as uncoordinated access policies may be preferred. In this context random access (RA) in its simplest form, i.e., additive links on-line Hawaii area (ALOHA), may again become attractive as also proved by a number of technologies adopting it. The use of forward error correction (FEC) can improve its performance, yet a comprehensive analytical model including this aspect is still missing. In this paper, we provide a first attempt by deriving exact expressions for the packet loss rate and spectral efficiency of ALOHA with FEC, and extend the result also to time- and frequency-asynchronous ALOHA aided by FEC. We complement our study with extensive evaluations of the expressions for relevant cases of study, including an IoT system served by low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Non-trivial outcomes show how time- and frequency-asynchronous ALOHA particularly benefit from the presence of FEC and become competitive with ALOHA. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Massive Machine-Type Communications towards 6G)
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13 pages, 299 KiB  
Article
An Enhanced Decoding Algorithm for Coded Compressed Sensing with Applications to Unsourced Random Access
by Vamsi K. Amalladinne, Jamison R. Ebert, Jean-Francois Chamberland and Krishna R. Narayanan
Sensors 2022, 22(2), 676; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22020676 - 16 Jan 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2453
Abstract
Unsourced random access (URA) has emerged as a pragmatic framework for next-generation distributed sensor networks. Within URA, concatenated coding structures are often employed to ensure that the central base station can accurately recover the set of sent codewords during a given transmission period. [...] Read more.
Unsourced random access (URA) has emerged as a pragmatic framework for next-generation distributed sensor networks. Within URA, concatenated coding structures are often employed to ensure that the central base station can accurately recover the set of sent codewords during a given transmission period. Many URA algorithms employ independent inner and outer decoders, which can help reduce computational complexity at the expense of a decay in performance. In this article, an enhanced decoding algorithm is presented for a concatenated coding structure consisting of a wide range of inner codes and an outer tree-based code. It is shown that this algorithmic enhancement has the potential to simultaneously improve error performance and decrease the computational complexity of the decoder. This enhanced decoding algorithm is applied to two existing URA algorithms, and the performance benefits of the algorithm are characterized. Findings are supported by numerical simulations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Massive Machine-Type Communications towards 6G)
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21 pages, 692 KiB  
Article
Ultra-Reliable Communication for Critical Machine Type Communication via CRAN-Enabled Multi-Connectivity Diversity Schemes
by Binod Kharel, Onel Luis Alcaraz López, Hirley Alves and Matti Latva-aho
Sensors 2021, 21(23), 8064; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21238064 - 2 Dec 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2309
Abstract
This paper focuses on edge-enabled cloud radio access network architecture to achieve ultra-reliable communication, a crucial enabler for supporting mission-critical machine-type communication networks. We propose coordinated multi-point transmission schemes taking advantage of diversity mechanisms in interference-limited downlink cellular networks. The network scenario comprises [...] Read more.
This paper focuses on edge-enabled cloud radio access network architecture to achieve ultra-reliable communication, a crucial enabler for supporting mission-critical machine-type communication networks. We propose coordinated multi-point transmission schemes taking advantage of diversity mechanisms in interference-limited downlink cellular networks. The network scenario comprises spatially distributed multiple remote radio heads (RRHs) that may cooperate through silencing, or by using more elaborated diversity strategies such as maximum ratio transmission or transmit antenna selection to serve user equipment in the ultra-reliable operation regime. We derive an exact closed-form expression for the outage probabilities and expected values of signal-to-interference ratio for silencing, transmit antenna selection and maximum ratio transmission schemes. We formulate rate control and energy efficiency under reliability constraints to test the performance and resource usage of the proposed schemes. Furthermore, we study the impact on average system sum throughput with throughput-reliability trade-off under cooperative communication. Extensive numerical analysis shows the feasibility of ultra-reliable communication by implementing diversity schemes with RRHs cooperation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Massive Machine-Type Communications towards 6G)
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