Uplink Coverage and Capacity Analysis of mMTC in Ultra-Dense Networks

In this paper, we investigate the uplink coverage and ergodic capacity of massive Machine-Type Communication (mMTC) considering an Ultra-Dense Network (UDN) environment. In MTC, devices equipped with sensing, computation, and communication capabilities connect to the Internet providing what is known as Internet-of-Things (IoT). A dense network would provide an all-in-one solution where scalable connectivity, high capacity, and uniform deep coverage are byproducts. To account for short link distances, the path loss is modeled as stretched exponential path loss (SEPL). Moreover, the fading is modeled as a general (alpha - mu) channel, where tractable and insightful results are derived for the Rayleigh fading special case. We consider the direct MTC access mode where mMTC nodes connect directly to the small cell. The analytical results disclose the impact of the system parameters and propagation environment parameters on the network performance. In particular, our results reveal that significant coverage enhancements and high uplink capacity are achievable at moderate cell densities, low transmission power, and moderate bandwidth. Moreover, the uplink network performance is independent of the maximum transmission power in the considered dense network scenario, allowing for longer battery lifetime of future IoT devices. The accuracy of the derived analytical results is assessed via extensive simulations.