Handling randomness of multi-class Random Access loads in LTE-Advanced network supporting small data applications

Along with the further enhancement from Long Term Evolution (LTE), LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) will provide more diversified mobile applications services. One of them is so-called “Small Data Applications (SDAs).” Due to the unique characteristic of SDA that each of SDAs will transmit merely a small data amount, the network should accommodate a large number of Random Access (RA) attempts every time each SDA has something to transmit. It is one of the most important issues in LTE-A networks to efficiently handle the heavy RA load caused by a huge number of SDAs. We consider two major candidate methods for RA preamble allocation and management. Our modeling and analysis can be utilized as a guideline to design efficient RA preamble resource management methods to accommodate new network traffic patterns caused by frequent transmissions of small data by mobile data applications.