Massive Machine Type Communications over 5G using Lean Protocols and Edge Proxies

We present a novel solution for Massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC) over wireless networks comprising of Edge Proxies and Lean Protocols. Our solution is designed to reduce the overheads associated with data exchange from massive number of low complexity, low power machine type devices. The solution allows the full richness of communication that is needed for machines sending data to other machines, servers, clouds or humans and yet is very efficient on the wireless access. The solution is also designed to support different mMTC traffic patterns including sporadic transmission of small amounts of real time or delay tolerant data as well as one to many and many to one communication which is common in many industrial 4.0, eHealth, connected homes and smart cities applications. Our solution imposes a less than 10% data overhead for small packets which is a 3 times improvement over standard reliable protocols like TCP and 6 times improvement over non-reliable IoT protocols such as 6LowPAN over UDP. Our connectionless access protocol is also highly signaling efficient and can support 3 times more mMTC users than legacy LTE.