Constraint Hubs Deployment for Efficient Machine-Type Communications

Massive Internet of Things (mIoT) is an important use case of 5G. The main challenge for mIoT is the huge amount of uplink traffic as it dramatically overloads the radio access network (RAN). To mitigate this shortcoming, a new RAN technology has been suggested, where small cells are used for interconnecting different devices to the network. The use of small cells will alleviate congestion at the RAN, reduce the end-to-end (E2E) delay, and increase the link capacity for communications. In this paper, we devise three solutions for deploying and interconnecting small cells that would handle mIoT traffic. A realistic physical model is considered in these solutions. The physical model is based on a composite fading channel that captures path loss, fast fading, shadowing, and interference to derive the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio. The three solutions consider two conflicting objectives, namely the cost and the E2E delay for deploying and backhauling small cells. The first solution minimizes the cost while the second reduces the E2E delay. The third solution uses bargaining game theory for reducing both the cost and the E2E delay. The proposed solutions are evaluated through simulations. The obtained results demonstrate the efficiency of each solution in achieving its design goals.