Network Dimensioning and Radio Resource Management for Multi-Tier Machine-Type Communications

For a radio resource limited multi-tier Machine-type Communication (MTC) network, controlling random access congestion while satisfying the unique requirements of each tier and guaranteeing fairness among nodes is always a challenge. In this paper, we propose three approaches for network dimensioning and radio resource partitioning for the uplink of an MTC network with signal-to-interference ratio (SIR)-based clustering and relaying, where MTC gateways (MTCGs) capture and forward the packets sent from MTC devices (MTCDs) to the base station (BS). Assuming that each tier has a different outage probability constraint, our first resource allocation method achieves maximum sum network capacity, while the other two methods achieve suboptimal sum network capacity with higher degrees of fairness. The proposed methods are also applicable when the objective is the network operator's total revenue instead of sum network capacity.