Machine-to-Machine Communication in LTE-A

Wireless equipped machines are increasing greatly in recent years, among which the cellular network based machine-to-machine communication (M2M) has shown the advantages of better coverage and lower network deployment cost. However, the current cellular network is designed for human-to-human communication, targeting the voice/media transmission with low access delay and high throughput, so the machines in GSM and UMTS are designed like a screenless phone. To extend the market to machine type communication, it is envisaged that the specific optimizations for M2M will be introduced in LTE-A, especially when M2M communication accounts for the considerable part in the total networking activities. In this paper, some of the considerations of the network side improvements are presented, from the physical layer, MAC to core network.