An analytic approach for resource allocation of IoT multicast traffic

Internet of Things (IoT) applications have become essential parts of telecommunication industry and forthcoming fifth generation (5G) ecosystem. Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) address the key challenges of the IoT segment for improved indoor coverage and low power consumption. Point-to-Multipoint (PTM) technology is a key enabler for supporting massive Machine-Type Communication (mMTC) applications in cellular networks. It facilitates the delivery of content to a theoretically unlimited number of receivers within the same pool of resources but cannot provide delay guarantees. Multicast traffic delivery should not affect conventional Point-to-Point (PTP) communications. This goal could be rather challenging to achieve in bandwidth-limited systems. To improve the support of software updates and group message delivery over cellular-based Single Cell PTM (SC-PTM) services, we compare two strategies, namely guaranteed and non-guaranteed multicast services, in terms of their performance in a NB-IoT network. We provide an analytic framework as a flexible and easy-to-implement tool for obtaining system's key performance metrics.