A preamble allocation method for M2M traffics in 3GPP LTE-A networks

The number of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) traffics is rapidly increasing in cellular communication systems. In order to ensure a maximum system capacity, the communication resources should be allocated appropriately to M2M traffics and common Human-to-Human (H2H) traffics. In this paper, a preamble allocation method for M2M services in 3GPP LTE system is presented. This method splits the set of available random access preambles into three subsets: the first one is for H2H services only, the second is for both H2H and M2M services and the third is for M2M services only. We model and analyze the throughput performance of the proposed method, and compare it with the two major candidate preamble allocation methods under consideration for possible adoption in LTE-Advanced networks. It is shown that the proposed method performs much better in most practical situations.