Massive access in the Random Access Channel of LTE for M2M communications: An energy perspective

The capacity limits of the Random Access Channel (RACH) of Long Term Evolution (LTE) for highly dense Machine-to-Machine communications are studied in this paper. We consider the case study when a high number of devices attempt to transmit information to the same base station in a very short period of time. Simulations have been performed considering several parameter configurations related to the random access procedure of LTE. The energy consumption is used as a primordial metric to compare any improvement regarding the random access procedure in future releases, in order to evaluate the impact on the battery lifetime of autonomous devices.