Packet-Based Preamble Design for Random Access in Massive IoT Communication Systems

The Internet of Things (IoT), which is a network that enables devices in the network to exchange information, has rapidly developed in recent years. Wireless communication technologies on the IoT are the best way to solve the “last mile” problem and gain substantial attention. The low power consumption and low cost are notably important for the IoT devices that are called massive IoT (mIoT). Narrow-band communication is one of the solutions to reduce the cost and power consumption and is considered the solution to large coverage without an available spectrum. Large coverage also implies a long transmission time interval, which makes the random access process in the current LTE system unsuitable for mIoT applications. The random access process in the current LTE system is notably complex with some handshakes to exchange information between the base station and the device. We address the issue in this paper and propose a packet-based preamble to simplify the random access process to decrease battery consumption.