Mission-Critical Machine-Type Communication: An Overview and Perspectives Towards 5G

The machine-type communication (MTC) plays an essential role in the mobile network society and it has demonstrated its effectiveness to generate significant revenues for mobile network operators. The MTC has become the main communication paradigm for several emerging smart services, such as public safety, health care, industrial automation, drones/robotics, utilities, and transportation. The MTC requires a major model change to cope with the improvement in 5G and imposes various requirements on the enabling technology, such as ultra-reliability, low latency, and availability. The scheme that fulfills such requirements are called a mission-critical MTC (mcMTC). However, the mcMTC is still in the early-standardization phase of 5G new radio and it needs a lot of research efforts to be improved. This paper presents an extensive review and evaluations to highlight diverse challenges and future aspects of mcMTC on 5G-enabling technologies. A number of research opportunities from both academic communities and industrial partners are given as examples for encouragement purposes.