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Abstract—NarrowBand-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a radio to improve the reliability of RACH [1, 2, 4]. In other words,
access technology recently standardized by 3GPP. To provide the preamble transmission is repeated for a dedicated number
reliable connections with extended coverage, a repetition trans- of times according to a repetition value that decided by an
mission scheme is applied in both Random Access CHannel
(RACH) procedure and data transmission. In this letter, we model evolved NodeB (eNB) [2].
RACH in the NB-IoT network taking into account the repeated Obviously, increasing the repetition value increases the suc-
preamble transmission and collision using stochastic geometry. cess opportunities of preamble transmission, but occupies more
We derive the exact expression of RACH success probability resources elements, which can bring serious burden for the
under time correlated interference, and validate the analysis with NB-IoT system leading to reduced resource elements for data
different repetition values via independent simulations. Numerical
results have shown that the repetition scheme can efficiently transmission. It is still unknown to what extent the repetition
improve the RACH success probability in a light traffic scenario, scheme improves the RACH success, and how to choose repe-
but only slightly improves that performance with very inefficient tition value in different traffic scenarios to balance the RACH
channel resource utilization in a heavy traffic scenario. success probability and data transmission channel resources.
Index Terms—NB-IoT, stochastic geometry, RACH success To study the RACH in cellular-based massive IoT network, a
probability, repetition values. general model was provided to analyze preamble transmission
based on stochastic geometry [5]. Unfortunately, this model
I. INTRODUCTION cannot be directly adopted to analyze the RACH in NB-IoT,
To support communication of billions of miscellaneous due to the following three reasons: 1) new preamble format
innovative devices, Internet of Things (IoT) has gained un- is defined based on frequency hopping; 2) repetition scheme
precedented momentum and commercial interest. In view of significantly complicate the analysis; 3) collision events are
this, a new radio access technology was developed by the not addressed in [5]. Considering the three issues, this letter
3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) named NarrowBand- provides a mathematical framework to analyze the RACH in
IoT (NB-IoT), which provide reliable connections among in- NB-IoT, where two independent link outage conditions are
expensive IoT devices with extended coverage and low power focused: 1) the insufficient Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise
consumption [1, 2]. NB-IoT is built from existing Long Term Ratio (SINR) of the received preamble; 2) the collision event,
evolution (LTE) design, which aims to achieve rapid specifica- which occurs if two or more IoT devices choose the same
tion and minimize development effort [3]. Accordingly, it reuses sub-carrier at the same time.
most LTE functionalities to achieve excellent co-existence perf- The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The system
ormance with legacy LTE technologies [4]. model and the analytical methodology are introduced in Sec-
However, to meet the requirements of IoT-based applica- tion II. The RACH success probability is presented in Section
tions, such as low data rate, wide coverage, and etc., a number III. Section IV presents the numerical results, and the paper is
of LTE features are simplified, optimized, or developed [3]. concluded in Section V.
One important key design difference between LTE and NB-IoT
is the Physical Random Access CHannel (PRACH) (i.e., the II. SYSTEM MODEL
channel used for uplink preamble transmission in the Random In the NB-IoT system, the eNBs and the IoT devices
Access CHannel procedure, a.k.a. RACH). In more detail, the are spatially distributed in R2 following two independent
frequency hopping signal is used to transmit each preamble for homogeneous Poisson point process (HPPP), ΦB and ΦD ,
time-of-arrival estimation1 , and a repetition scheme is applied with intensities λB and λD , respectively. According to [2],
each IoT device associates with its geographically nearest
Manuscript received October 19, 2017; revised December 15, 2017; accepted eNB. Path-loss attenuation is defined as r−α , where r is the
January 5, 2018. This work has been partly supported by the EC H2020
Project Data Aware Wireless Network for Internet-of-Everything (778305). propagation distance and α is the path-loss exponent. We
The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for consider identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading channel,
publication was J. Ben-Othman. (Corresponding author: Yansha Deng.) where the channel power gain h is assumed to be exponentially
N. Jiang, and A. Nallanathan are with School of Electronic Engineering and
Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK (e-mail: distributed random variable with unit mean. According to [1,
{nan.jiang, a.nallanathan}@qmul.ac.uk). 2], the transmitted power of IoT devices determined by the
Y. Deng, M. Condoluci and M. Dohler are with Department of Infor- full path-loss inversion power control, where each IoT device
matics, King’s College London, London, UK (e-mail:{yansha.deng, mas-
simo.condoluci, mischa.dohler}@kcl.ac.uk). maintains the received signal power in the eNB equalling to a
W. Guo is with School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry, same threshold ρ by compensating its own path-loss.
UK (e-mail: weisi.guo@warwick.ac.uk). In the uplink of NB-IoT, the Narrowband Physical Uplink
1 The frequency hopping preamble is designed for calculating time-of-arrival
to facilitate distance estimation between the IoT device and its associated eNB, Shared CHannels (NPUSCHs) are used for data transmis-
which is beyond the scope of this paper [1, 2]. sion and the Narrowband-PRACHs (NPRACHs) are used for
2
preamble transmission. In more detail, 180 kHz of spectrum where ZB = kZintra k is the number of active intra-cell
is occupied with 3.75 kHz tone spacing (i.e., spans over 48 interfering
IoT devices, and
sub-carriers) or 15 kHz tone spacing (i.e., spans over 12 sub- ∆ S IN Rnτ ,1 ≥ γth , S IN Rnτ ,2 ≥ γth ,
θ nτ = . (3)
carriers), where the NPRACH only supports 3.75 kHz tone S IN Rnτ ,3 ≥ γth , S IN Rnτ ,4 ≥ γth
spacing. To fulfill the coverage requirements of different IoT In (3), γth is the SINR threshold, and S IN Rnτ ,1 is the
devices, NB-IoT network can configure up to 3 repetition received SINR of the 1st symbol group in the nτ th repetition.
values from the set {1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128} in a cell, and Based on Slivnyak’s theorem [6], we formulate this SINR
allows flexible configuration of NPRACH resources [4]. In this experienced at the typical eNB located at the origin as
model, we consider single repetition value to provide funda- ρ0 h0
mental insights due to repetition, where the related resources S IN R = P P −α , (4)
ρj hj + Pi kui k hi + σ 2
assignment of NPRACHs only takes place in the begin of a j∈Zintra i∈Zinter
transmission time interval (TTI) as shown in Fig. 1.
TTI
where k·k is the Euclidean norm, ρ0 is the full path-loss
NPRACH
5.6Nτ inversion power control threshold, h0 is the channel power gain
from the typical IoT device to its associated eNB, Zinter is set
NPUSCH
Repetition Nτ
NPUSCH
Repetition 1
Repetition 2
Repetition Nτ
Repetition 1
Repetition 2
where P{ZB =n} is the probability of the number of interfering where s = γth /ρ, Ikintra and Ikinter are the aggregate intra-cell
IoT devices ZB = n, and pS (Nτ , n) is the preamble trans- interference and the aggregate inter-cell interference when the
mission success probability of an IoT device conditioning on kth preamble symbol group is transmitted, respectively.
{ZB =n}. The Probability Mass Function (PMF) of the number In (12), the Laplace Transform of the aggregate interference
of interfering IoT devices ZB is represented as [5, Eq.(12)] from the intra-cell interfering IoT devices received at the
n typical eNB conditioning on ZB = n is obtained as
c(c+1) Γ(n + c + 1)( λλDa ) m
m
P {ZB = n} = B
Ikintra
n+c+1 ,
P
(9) −s h X X i
Γ(c + 1)Γ(n + 1)( λλDa + c) E[e k=1 ZB = n] = E exp −s ρ hkj
B
j∈Zintra k=1
where λDa is the intensity of active IoT devices using the n
hY m
X i (a) 1
same sub-carrier given in (1), λB is the intensity of eNBs, =E exp −sρ hkj = ( )mn , (13)
1 + sρ
c = 3.575 is a constant related to the approximate PMF of the j=1 k=1
PPP Voronoi cell, and Γ{·} is the gamma function.
where (a) follows by taking the average with respect to h1j ,
Without loss of generality, we assume each IoT device h2j , · · · , hm
j .
remains spatially static during a TTI (i.e., we assume that the In (12), the Laplace Transform of the aggregate interference
preamble format 0 is used, where a preamble repetition only from the inter-cell interfering IoT devices received at the
takes 5.6 ms [1]), and thus the mutual interference among IoT typical eNB is obtained as
devices is temporally correlated [7]. This temporal correlation m
m
Ikinter
P
complicate the derivation of the preamble transmission success −s X X
k −α
E[e k=1 ] = E exp −s Pi ( hi )kui k
probability, which is the main challenge of RACH success
i∈Z k=1
analysis. The preamble transmission success probability with Y inter
(a) 1 m
Nτ repetitions pS (Nτ , n) is derived in the following Theorem. =E ( )
1 + sPi xi −α
Theorem 1. The preamble transmission success probability of i∈Zinter
Z ∞
a randomly chosen IoT device with Nτ preamble repetitions (b)
h 1 m
i
= exp −2πλDa E P 1 − ( ) xdx
pS (Nτ , n) is expressed as (P
ρ )
1
α 1 + sP x−α
Nτ
Z ∞ h
(c) 2 2 1 m
i
= exp −2πλDa s E[P ] 1−(
Y
pS (Nτ , n) = 1 − 1 − P{θnτ ZB = n} α α ) ydy ,
1
(sρ)− α 1 + y −α
nτ =1
(14)
Nτ N
=
X
(−1)nτ +1 τ
P{θ1 , · · · , θnτ ZB = n}, (10) where (a) obtained by taking the average with respect to
nτ =1
nτ h1i , h2i , · · · , hm
i , (b) follows from the probability generation
functional (PGFL) of the HPPP, (c) follows by changing the
1 2 2
where ( Nnττ ) = nτ !(NNττ−n
!
τ )!
is the binomial coefficient, and variables y = x/(sP ) α , and E[P α ] = ρ α /πλB is the
P{θ1 , · · · , θnτ ZB = n} is the probability that all of 4 × nτ moments of the transmit power [5, Eq.(A.2,A.3)]. Substituting
(i.e., a preamble consists of 4 symbol groups) time-correlated (13) and (14) into (12), we derive the probability that all of m
preamble symbol groups are successfully received in the eNB. preamble symbol groups are successfully transmitted.
For ease of presentation, we assume m = 4 × nτ , and
For simplicity, we present a special case of RACH with two
P{θ1 , · · · , θnτ ZB = n} is expressed as
preamble repetitions, and the preamble transmission success
P{θ1 , · · · , θnτ ZB = n} = probability pS (2, n) is expressed as
pS (2, n) = 1 − 1 − P{θ1 ZB = n} 1 − P{θ2 ZB = n}
h i
σ2 2 R∞
exp − mγth ρ − 2(γth ) α λλDa (γ −1 1 − ( 1+y1−α )m ydy
B th ) α
, (a)
(1 + γth )mn = 2P{θ1 ZB = n} − P{θ1 , θ2 ZB = n}, (15)
(11)
where (a) follows from P{θ1 ZB =n}=P{θ2 ZB =n}. Substi-
where α is the path-loss parameter, γth is the received SINR tuting (15) and (9) into (8), we obtain the RACH success
threshold, σ 2 is the noise, ρ is the full path-loss inversion probability when Nτ = 2.
power control threshold.
IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS
Proof. Based on the Binomial theorem, the preamble In this section, the derived analytical results are validated
transmission success probability of Nτ repetitions via Monte Carlo simulations. The eNBs and IoT devices are
P{θ1 , · · · , θnτ ZB = n} is expressed as deployed in a 104 km2 circle area. We set λB = 0.1 eNBs/km2 ,
P{S IN R1 ≥ γth , · · · , S IN Rm ≥ γth ZB = n} = γth = 0 dB, α = 4, ρ = − 130 dBm, the bandwidth of a sub-
m m carrier is BW = 3.75 kHz, and thus the noise is σ 2 = −174+
mγth σ 2 Ikintra Ikinter
P P
−s −s
exp(− )E[e k=1 ZB = n]E[e k=1 ], (12) 10log10 (BW ) = −138.3 dBm. Different from LTE with TTI =
ρ 40 ms [8], we set TTI in NB-IoT network as 640 ms following
4
the defined Narrowband Physical Broadcast Channel (NPBCH) cellular-based IoT network [10]. To meet this lower bound, the
TTI [2]. The packet arrival periods of IoT devices are from a RACH success probability for √ one single RACH opportunity
few minutes to several days [9], hence we assume two traffic should achieve at least 1 − 10 1 − 99% ≈ 37%. Fig. 3(a)
scenarios, where the light traffic scenario is 1 packet/hour of plots the minimum repetition value (Nτ ) to achieve a RACH
each IoT device, and the heavy traffic scenario is 1 packet/10 success probability that is greater than or equal to 37%, and
minutes of each IoT device. Therefore, the active probabilities Fig. 3(b) plots the time vacancy ratio (Ta ) under the condition
of each IoT device during 640 ms are pal = 640/3600000 = of required repetition value. We assume Nτ is configured from
0.00018 and pah = 640/600000 = 0.0011, respectively. set {1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64}, and when neither a value can help
(a) Light Traffic Scenario
IoT devices to reach 37% RACH success probability, the eNB
RACH Success Probability
1
will choose maximum repetition value 64. We first observe
0.8
that Nτ increases with λD /λB in Fig. 3(a), which leads to
0.6
0.4
an opposite down trend of Ta in Fig. 3(b). In the light traffic
0.2 Analysis Repetition value = 8,4,2,1 scenario, RACH success probability is always larger than 37%
Simulation
0
0.1 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
with relatively small repetition values, which contributes to a
× 104
λD /λB relatively high time vacancy ratio. However, in the heavy traffic
(b) Heavy Traffic Scenario
scenario, the required repetition value increased rapidly with
RACH Success Probability
1
Analysis
0.8 Repetition value = 8,4,2,1 Simulation λD /λB , and the performance cannot meet the requirement of
0.6
37% RACH success probability after a certain point despite
0.4
that the maximum repetition value is set.
0.2
0
0.1 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 V. CONCLUSION
λD /λB × 104
In this letter, we developed a stochastic geometry framework
Fig. 2: RACH success probability.
to analyze the RACH under the repetition scheme in the NB-
Fig. 2(a) and Fig. 2(b) plot the RACH success probabilities IoT system. To evaluate how the repetition mechanism fulfills
of a randomly chosen IoT device in the light traffic scenario the requirement of improving RACH reliability, we derived the
and the heavy traffic scenario, respectively. The analytical exact expression of the RACH success probability under the
curves of the RACH success probability are plotted using time correlated interference. Different from existing works, we
(8), which closely match with simulation points that validates considered both SINR outage and collision from the network
the accuracy of developed mathematical framework. We first point of view. The numerical results shed light on that the
observe that for all curves, the RACH success probability RACH success probability increases with the repetition value,
decreases with the increase of the density ratio between IoT and also revealed that very high repetition value will lead to a
devices and eNBs (λD /λB ), which is due to the following two low channel resources utilization in the heavy traffic scenario.
reasons: 1) increasing the number of IoT devices generating
more interference leads to lower received SINR at the eNB;
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