A 3D Topology Optimization Scheme for M2M Communications

Communication networking leverages emerging network technologies such as topology management schemes to satisfy the demand of exponentially increasing devices and associated network traffic. Particularly, without efficient topology management, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications will likely asymmetrically congest gateways and eNodeBs in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and Long-Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) networks, especially when M2M devices are massively deployed to support diverse applications. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a 3D Topology Optimization (3D-TO) scheme to obtain the optimal placement of gateways and eNodeBs for M2M communications. By taking advantage of the fact that most M2M devices rarely move, 3D-TO can specify optimal gateway positions for each M2M application, which consists of multiple M2M devices. This is achieved through global optimization, based on the distances between gateways and M2M devices. Utilizing the optimization process, 3D-TO likewise determines optimal eNodeB positions for each M2M application, based on the distances between eNodeBs and optimal M2M gateways. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed 3D-TO scheme towards M2M communications, with regard to throughput, delay, path loss, and packet loss ratio.