Energy-Efficient Group Paging Mechanism for QoS Constrained Mobile IoT Devices over LTE-A Pro Networks under 5G

The latest evolution of cellular technologies, i.e., 5G including long term evolution-advanced (LTE-A) Pro and 5G new radio promises enhancement to mobile technologies for the Internet of Things (IoT). Despite 5G's vision to cater to IoT, yet some of the aspects are still optimized for human-to-human (H2H) communication. More specifically, the existing group paging mechanism in LTE-A Pro has not yet clearly defined approaches to group, mobile IoT devices (MIDs) having diverse characteristics, such as discontinuous reception (DRX) and data transmission frequency (DTF) with various mobility patterns. Inappropriate grouping of MIDs may lead to increased energy consumption and degraded quality of service, especially in terms of packet arrival delay (PAD) and packet loss rate (PLR). Therefore, in this paper, we devise novel models to estimate PAD, PLR, and energy consumption for MIDs, specifically for the group paging mechanism. Based on the proposed models, we formulate an optimization problem with the objective to minimize energy consumption of MIDs, while providing required PAD and PLR. The nonlinear convex optimization problem addressed herein is solved using the Lagrangian approach, and the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions have been applied to derive optimal characteristics for MIDs to join the group, namely, DRX and DTF. The extensive numerical results presented verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, and the mathematical models demonstrate the superiority of our proposed approach over random grouping approach concerning significant energy consumption of MIDs.