Improving LTE/EPC signaling for sporadic data with a control-plane based transmission procedure

The architecture and the protocols of LTE/EPC were designed to deliver high transmission rates with QoS requirements. In order to be able to guarantee different levels of QoS each transmission is based on a bearer, which need to be set up within the network. It then requires to store contexts in the various entities of the network and to set up several tunnels or connections both in the user and the control planes. We consider the Short Message Service (SMS), which is a very simple but popular service and analyze the number of signaling messages that are exchanged within the core network and the access network to transmit one data message. We then propose a new procedure based on a set of simple messages to transport such isolated messages only in the control plane. We show that this procedure may generate additional signaling in some cases but is efficient as soon as the proportion of sporadic traffic is not negligible. This procedure is generic and may be used for any type of sporadic traffic, which will be increased in the next few years with the deployment of wirelessly connected smart devices.