Critical machine type communication in 5G networks

Machine-type multicast service (MtMS) is a good candidate to support mission-critical applications with a large number of low-cost devices. It allows a flexible customer-driven group formation and benefits from single cell point-to-multipoint (SC-PTM) capabilities. We analyze the performance of two approaches for delivering critical updates to a massive number of constrained devices. The first one is designed to multicast data to all devices in a cell requiring the update. Another approach allows initiation of multiple multicast sessions to small subgroups of devices for downloading the critical file. To inform devices in power saving mode about upcoming data in downlink, the base station has to send a paging message. We simulate the 3GPP legacy paging mechanism and its improved version, named enhanced group paging (eGP), designed to efficiently page a huge number of IoT/MTC devices. The conventional approach to serve all devices by one multicast session can be applied for delivering delay tolerant applications and when synchronized devices actions are needed. More strict delay requirements of critical applications can be fulfilled by a subgroup-based multicasting scheme. Copyright © 2018 for the individual papers by the papers' authors.