Cell Association for MTC Devices in 5G Networks: Schemes and Performance Evaluation

Fifth generation (5G) networks offer tremendous opportunities for Internet of things applications by facilitating massive machine-type communications (MTC). As many MTC devices are battery powered and intend to stay often in the sleep or power-saving mode, cell (re)association needs to be performed when a device wakes up. On the other hand, 5G networks are usually deployed as heterogeneous networks consisting of both macro and small cells under which a single device may be covered by multiple radio access technologies (RATs) simultaneously. Therefore, it is imperative to design effective cell association schemes for the purpose of efficient connectivity and resource utilization, especially when a device has multiple connectivity options. In this paper, three cell association schemes are proposed by considering a network scenario where multiple cells and different RATs are available for MTC devices. To perform cell association, received signal strength, channel occupancy status of neighboring cells, and directed handoff capability are considered as the criteria for our scheme design. Through analysis and extensive simulations, we demonstrate that superior system performance could be achieved for a given network by employing a suitable scheme that integrates multiple criteria and considers performance tradeoff.