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Guest Editorial Special Issue on Internet of

Things Over LTE/LTE-A Network: Theory,
Methods, and Case Studies
Article June 2016
DOI: 10.1109/JIOT.2016.2554739

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Joel Rodrigues

Communications Research Centre Canada

Instituto Nacional de Telecomunicaes

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314

IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 3, NO. 3, JUNE 2016

Guest Editorial
Special Issue on Internet of Things Over
LTE/LTE-A Network: Theory,
Methods, and Case Studies
ITH the successful deployment of the fourth-generation
cellular networks around the world, long-term evolution (LTE) and LTE-advanced (LTE-A) have become key
technologies to enable Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
To accommodate various streaming data of IoT applications, LTE/LTE-A standards have defined several quality-ofservice (QoS) classes for different traffic characteristics, in
terms of traffic bit-rate, tolerable delay, and packet loss rate.
Moreover, to meet the stringent power-saving requirements for
IoT devices, LTE/LTE-A standards also have defined the discontinuous reception/transmission (DRX/DTX) mechanism to
allow devices to turn off their radio interfaces and go to sleep
when no data need to be received or transmitted from/to the
evolved Node B (eNodeB).
Clearly, the convergence of IoT and LTE/LTE-A can considerably benefit both sides. IoT devices could efficiently transfer
their data using LTE/LTE-A networks, while the LTE/LTEA operators may develop more value-added IoT services.
Despite such promising future, there are still many challenges
for IoT over LTE/LTE-A network. To address these challenges,
we present this special issue, aiming to help both industry and
academia research communities to better understand the recent
progress and potential research directions on the path toward
the future of IoT over LTE/LTE-A.
The response to our Calls for Papers on this special issue
was overwhelming, with nearly 30 papers submitted by authors
around the globe. During the review process, each paper was
assigned to and reviewed by at least three experts in the relevant areas, with a rigorous two-round review process. Thanks
to the courtesy of the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE I NTERNET
OF T HINGS J OURNAL , Dr. C. Wang, we were able to accept
11 excellent papers covering various aspects of IoT over
LTE/LTE-A.
In Context-Aware Dynamic Resource Allocation for
Cellular M2M Communications, Pang et al. investigate how
to efficiently allocate resources to a large number of IoT
devices that attempt to access the network at the same time.
Specifically, they first propose a contention detection method
to facilitate the access barring schemes defined in LTE specifications. Based on that, they develop a two-phase resource
allocation mechanism, with which the eNodeB first estimates

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JIOT.2016.2554739

the access attempts, and then dynamically allocates resources

to IoT devices with service guarantee. Extensive numerical
results show that the proposed mechanism achieves both high
resource utilization and low access delay.
To facilitate resource-intensive IoT applications, LTE
eNodeB can be augmented with cloud resources, which can
be virtualized and dynamically shared by various IoT applications. Such a scenario is studied in R EPLISOM: Disciplined
Tiny Memory Replication for Massive IoT Devices in LTE
Edge Cloud, where Abdelwahab et al. envision that the performance of such an edge cloud may be compromised if there
are a massive number of IoT devices requesting memory replication simultaneously. To address this challenge, they propose
a novel architecture and a memory replication protocol, in
which device-to-device (D2D) communication can be applied
to delay some requests and compressed sensing technique can
be used for efficient data recovery. Through solid theoretical
analysis and numerical results, the authors demonstrate the
feasibility of the proposed scheme, in terms of reduced delay,
improved energy efficiency, etc.
To efficiently support and manage a massive number of
IoT devices, in Internet of Things Session Management Over
LTEBalancing Signal Load, Power, and Delay, Wang et al.
investigate how to optimize the radio resource control (RRC)
and DRX. Specifically, the authors propose a session management method to optimize the energy consumption, signal
load, and service delay, in which they first develop a Markov
chain to model the impacts of DRX, and then design optimal uplink scheduler and adaptive DRX algorithms. Numerical
results clearly demonstrate the advantages of the proposed
scheme in terms of energy saving and signaling overhead
reduction.
In Probabilistic Analysis on QoS Provisioning for Internet
of Things in LTE-A Heterogeneous Networks With Partial
Spectrum Usage, Zhang et al. investigate QoS provisioning for IoT applications in heterogeneous LTE-A system
with partial spectrum usage. Specifically, they first apply
stochastic geometry to estimate the impacts of unplanned
random access behaviors, where effective bandwidth is utilized to represent the QoS requirement. They then formulate a two-level Stackelberg game for the resource
allocation in macrocells and femtocells. Finally, they conduct extensive simulation studies to validate the proposed
schemes.

c 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 3, NO. 3, JUNE 2016

For future LTE/LTE-A networks, a critical issue is how to

jointly support both machine-type communications (MTCs)
and human-type communications (HTCs), which may affect
each other due to the random access mechanism. In
Allocation of Control Resources for Machine-to-Machine
and Human-to-Human Communications Over LTE/LTE-A
Networks, de Andrade et al. investigate this issue and they
propose a novel resource allocation scheme for random access
in the packet downlink control channel, where the main
idea is to consider the resource usage in both the control and
data channels. Within the proposed framework, the authors
develop three schedulers and conduct extensive numerical
study to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme,
as well as the impact of MTC on the QoS of HTC.
In Queuing Analysis of Two-Hop Relay Technology in
LTE/LTE-A Networks With Unsaturated and Asymmetric
Traffic, Li et al. envision that multihop relaying will become
a key technology that can facilitate efficient IoT applications
in future LTE-A systems. To this end, the authors consider
a two-hop relay system, in which relay nodes, which are connecting to the eNodeB via LTE, can use IEEE 802.11 to
provide low-cost connectivity for other IoT devices. For such
a system, the authors analyze the queueing performance of
IEEE 802.11 in a two-hop relay scenario with unsaturated
and asymmetric traffic, where they also derive the end-to-end
delay performance, which can help to understand the system
behavior.
In Performance Evaluation of LTE/LTE-A DRX:
A Markovian Approach, Ramazanali and Vinel develop
analytical model to characterize the behaviors of DRX,
which is a key technology in LTE/LTE-A to reduce energy
consumption for IoT devices. The key novelties of this paper
include a Markov chain-based analytical model and the
consideration of military training applications, which could
be an important type of traffic for IoT applications.
To
improve
the
performance
of
DRX,
Balasubramanya et al.s DRX With Quick Sleeping: A Novel
Mechanism for Energy-Efficient IoT Using LTE/LTE-A proposes to modify the existing DRX scheme by integrating
a quick sleeping indicator mechanism for both the normal
mode and the coverage enhancement (CE) mode. By using
simulation and analytical results, the authors demonstrate
that, compared to the current DRX scheme, the proposed
scheme in the normal mode can improve the energy efficiency
by 45%, while the proposed scheme in the CE mode can
improve the energy efficiency by 63%.
Security is a major concern in many IoT applications.
In Group-Based Authentication and Key Agreement With
Dynamic Policy Updating for MTC in LTE-A Networks,
Li et al. study the authentication and key management issues in
LTE system. Specifically, they believe that the existing authentication scheme specified in LTE standard may not be efficient
for a large number of group-based IoT applications, such as
smart-grid. To address such an issue, they propose a novel
group-based authentication and key agreement protocol with
dynamic policy updating. Extensive security and performance
analysis demonstrate that the proposed protocol is efficient in
that it can authenticate multiple IoT devices at the same time,

315

and can dynamically update the access policy in a large group

of IoT devices.
In a typical LTE/LTE-A system, turbo code and automatic
repeat request are used to improve the reliability of transmission. However, such a combination may not be the optimal solutions. In Joint Network Channel Fountain Schemes
for Machine-Type Communications Over LTE-Advanced,
Nessa and Kadoch study how to utilize fountain coding to
improve the transmission performance in LTE-A system for
IoT applications. Specifically, they consider a clustered heterogeneous IoT system, in which a cluster head can connect
to the eNodeB and forward traffic between IoT devices and the
Internet. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme can
achieve better throughput performance than that of the existing
schemes.
Last but not least, in Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation
for D2D Communications Underlaying Cloud-RAN-Based
LTE-A Networks, Zhou et al. propose an energy-efficient
resource allocation scheme for D2D communication in an LTE
system with cloud-radio access network, which can effectively
enable a number of IoT applications. The main idea of the
proposed scheme is to jointly optimize channel and power allocation. To investigate the optimal design, the authors develop
a game-theoretical approach by modeling the resource allocation problem as a noncooperative game. They also propose
efficient algorithms to solve the game problem. Simulation
results confirm the efficiency of the proposed scheme.
In closing, we would like to thank all the authors for their
excellent contributions. We would also like to thank all the
reviewers for their dedicated efforts in reviewing the papers,
and for their valuable comments and constructive suggestions
for improving the quality of the papers. Finally, we appreciate
the advice and support of the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. C. Wang,
and the Associate Editor-in-Chief, Dr. N. Kato, for their help
during the publication process.
K EJIE L U, Guest Editor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Puerto Rico at Mayagez
Mayagez, PR 00680 USA
S ASTRI KOTA, Guest Editor
SoHum Consultants
Sunnyvale, CA 94087 USA
B O RONG, Guest Editor
Communications Research Centre Canada
Ottawa, ON K2H 8S2, Canada
J OEL J. P. C. RODRIGUES, Guest Editor
Instituto de Telecomunicaes
Universidade da Beira Interior
Covilh 6201-001, Portugal
and
University of Fortaleza (UNIFOR)
60811-905 Fortaleza-CE, Brazil
H USSEIN T. M OUFTAH, Guest Editor
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada

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IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 3, NO. 3, JUNE 2016

Kejie Lu (S02M03SM07) is an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical and

Computer Engineering, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagez, Mayagez, PR, USA. He is also
an Oriental Scholar with the Shanghai University of Electric Power, Shanghai, China. He has
authored or coauthored approximately 150 journal and conference papers. His current research
interests include architecture and protocols design for computer and communication networks,
performance analysis, network security, and wireless communications.
Dr. Lu is an Editor of the IEEE I NTERNET OF T HINGS J OURNAL.

Sastri Kota (M74SM86LSM07) is the President of SoHum Consultants, Sunnyvale, CA,

USA, and an Adjunct Professor with the University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland. He has held technical
and management positions with Harris, Loral, Lockheed Martin, SRI International, the MITRE
Corporation, and the Xerox Corporation USA. He was the Head of the U.S. delegation and the
U.S. Chair of the ITU-R Working Party 4B. He has authored or coauthored 5 books and over
200 papers in conference proceedings and journals. His current research interests include hybrid
satellite-terrestrial next-generation networks, cognitive networks, quality of service for satellite and
wireless networks, hybrid networking for high-speed trains, mobile communications, and DVB
satellite networks.
Dr. Kota is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA.

Bo Rong (M07) is a Research Scientist with the Communications Research Centre Canada,
Ottawa, ON, Canada. He is also an Adjunct Professor with the cole de Technologie Suprieure,
Universit du Qubec, Montreal, QC, Canada. His current research interests include modeling,
simulation, and performance analysis of next-generation wireless networks.
Dr. Rong is a Member of the IEEE Communications Society and Broadcasting Society. He
serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE C OMMUNICATIONS L ETTERS.

IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 3, NO. 3, JUNE 2016

317

Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues (S01A05M06SM06) is a Professor with the Departmento de

Informtica, Universidade da Beira Interior, Covilh, Portugal, and a Senior Researcher with the
Instituto de Telecomunicaes, Lisbon, Portugal. He has authored or coauthored over 450 papers in
refereed international journals and conferences and two books. He holds two patents. His current
research interests include e-health, sensor networks, Internet of Things, vehicular delay-tolerant
networks, and mobile and ubiquitous computing.
Prof. Rodrigues is a Licensed Professional Engineer (as a Senior Member), a Member of the
Internet Society, an IARIA Fellow, and a Senior Member of the ACM. He was a recipient of
several Outstanding Leadership and Outstanding Service Awards of the IEEE Communications
Society and several Best Paper Awards.

Hussein T. Mouftah (S74M76SM80F90LF13) is a Distinguished University Professor

with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa, Ottawa,
ON, Canada. He has authored or coauthored 10 books, 72 book chapters and over 1400 technical
papers, 6 invention disclosures, and 144 industrial reports. He holds 14 patents.
Dr. Mouftah has served on the IEEE ComSoc for many years. He became a Fellow of the
Canadian Academy of Engineering in 2003, the Engineering Institute of Canada in 2005, and the
Royal Society of Canada RSC Academy of Science in 2008. He was the recipient of numerous
prestigious awards.