GSM/GPRS Bearers Efficiency Analysis for Machine Type Communications

Short Message Service (SMS) over circuit switched (CS), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) and GPRS are the main bearers to support different Machine Type Communications (MTC) over a 2G network. Communications of a large amount of Machine to Machine (M2M) terminals may have a significant impact on worldwide deployed 2G networks. This paper compares the efficiency for each of the 2G bearers when M2M terminals perform mobile originated (MO) data calls under a predefined M2M application. The efficiency of each bearer is evaluated at Layers 2 (L2) and 3 (L3) by the ratio of user data payload to the total L3 messages and by the amount of M2M terminals the radio interface can support within one hour. Results show that USSD is the most efficient bearer in L3. When considering L2 messages in radio interface, GPRS proves to be the most efficient bearer.