An efficient scheme for MTC overload control based on signaling message compression

Whilst Machine Type Communication (MTC) represents an important business opportunity for mobile operators, mobile operators fear the congestion that could come with the deployment of billions/trillions of MTC devices. In this paper, we present a new mechanism that anticipates system overload due to MTC signaling messages in 3GPP networks. This mechanism proactively avoids system congestion by compacting the signaling message content for a group of MTC devices sharing redundant Information Elements (IE) by creating a profile ID for this group. Furthermore, along with this solution, we propose a dynamic grouping solution, which groups MTC devices with common subscription features in order to control the MTC signaling traffic when the network is overloaded. Simulation results show that compared to the Access Class Baring (ACB) mechanism, introduced by 3GPP, our proposed solution can avoid system overload without dropping MTC signaling messages, which is highly beneficial for MTC applications requiring service reliability.