Deep Learning Based Double-Contention Random Access for Massive Machine-Type Communication

With the rapid development of 5G, massive machine-type communication is expected to experience significant growth, leading to severe random access collisions. To address this issue, we first adopt deep neural networks to detect random access collisions by learning the features of the received signals. Based on the collision-detection results, we propose a double-contention random access (DCRA) scheme, with which the base station can schedule one more contention process for devices experiencing collisions. To fully harness the collision-resolution capability of the proposed DCRA scheme, we further analyze its performance and illustrate how to tune the backoff parameters to optimize the network throughput. It is revealed that the maximum throughput of the DCRA scheme depends on the number of random access preambles and the collision recognition accuracy. The corresponding optimal backoff parameters are then obtained, which greatly facilitates implementations in practice. Simulation results show that with a high collision recognition accuracy, the proposed scheme can achieve significant throughput improvement.