An Efficient Group-Based Mobility Management Mechanism for Cellular M2M Networks

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is an emerging communication paradigm, and it offers ubiquitous applications. Cellular M2M network has shown great potential. A well-established mobile cellular network seems to be the best option to provide connectivity for M2M communication, and this has attracted mobile network operators to host or deploy the M2M network on their existing infrastructure. However, one of the significant challenges to realize a cellular M2M network is its device density. In a cellular M2M network, millions of devices are connected to the mobile communication system in addition to the current mobile subscribers. The accommodation of a massive number of M2M devices would be a considerable burden for the mobile network system, as the signaling of M2M devices would cause channel congestion and undesirable signaling overheads due to mobility and session management. In this paper, we propose an efficient group-based mobility management mechanism for cellular M2M communication to mitigate the signaling cost for device mobility-related events.