A Critical MTC Resource Allocation Approach for LTE Networks With Finite Blocklength Codes

Critical machine-type communications (cMTC) are targeted as a major use case in the design of the fifth generation (5G) cellular systems. In this regard, the third-generation partnership project (3GPP) has introduced several enhancements to evolve the LTE standard to meet the 5G requirements. Shortened transmission time intervals (sTTIs) are considered one of the most significant improvements proposed to satisfy the stringent latency requirements of cMTC. However, this entails several challenges to the resource allocation and scheduling process. In this paper, we address the resource allocation and scheduling of cMTC in LTE networks. The impact on the conventional human-type communications (HTC) is considered while adopting a puncturing scheduling technique. In addition, the reliability of the cMTC is ensured by utilizing the finite blocklength coding analysis to model the transmission errors and the effective bandwidth and effective capacity concepts to guarantee the queuing delay statistics of the cMTC packets. Moreover, we propose matching theory-based computationally efficient algorithms to solve the formulated optimal resource allocation problems with reduced complexity. The proposed methods are analyzed from a practical perspective. Extensive simulations show a close-to-optimal performance of the proposed schemes while outperforming other scheduling algorithms from the literature.