Cell Association for MTC Devices in 5G Networks: Schemes and Performance Evaluation

Fifth generation (5G) networks offer tremendous opportunities for Internet of things applications by facilitating massive machine-type communications (MTC). As many MTC devices are battery powered and intend to stay often in the sleep or power-saving mode, cell (re)association needs to be performed when a device wakes up. On the other hand, 5G networks are usually deployed as heterogeneous networks consisting of both macro and small cells under which a single device may be covered by multiple radio access technologies (RATs) simultaneously. Therefore, it is imperative to design effective cell association schemes for the purpose of efficient connectivity and resource utilization, especially …