Random Access for Machine-Type Communication based on Bloom Filtering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Bloom filter-inspired random access method for Machine-Type Communications that improves resource efficiency and reduces latency, enabling early device identification and differentiated treatment in 5G systems.

Contribution

It proposes a novel signature-based access method using Bloom filters, applicable to LTE-A and future 5G protocols, enhancing efficiency and latency performance.

Findings

Lower connection establishment latency for synchronous arrivals

More efficient resource utilization compared to LTE-A

Enables early device identification for differentiated treatment

Abstract

We present a random access method inspired on Bloom filters that is suited for Machine-Type Communications (MTC). Each accessing device sends a \emph{signature} during the contention process. A signature is constructed using the Bloom filtering method and contains information on the device identity and the connection establishment cause. We instantiate the proposed method over the current LTE-A access protocol. However, the method is applicable to a more general class of random access protocols that use preambles or other reservation sequences, as expected to be the case in 5G systems. We show that our method utilizes the system resources more efficiently and achieves significantly lower connection establishment latency in case of synchronous arrivals, compared to the variant of the LTE-A access protocol that is optimized for MTC traffic. A dividend of the proposed method is that it allows the base station (BS) to acquire the device identity and the connection establishment cause already in the initial phase of the connection establishment, thereby enabling their differentiated treatment by the BS.