A Mechanism for Uplink Packet Scheduler in LTE Network in the Context of Machine-to-Machine Communication Adyson M. Maia * , Dario Vieira † , Miguel F. de Castro * , Yacine Ghamri-Doudane ‡ * GREat Lab - Federal University of Cear´ a (UFC), Fortaleza, Brazil † Engineering School of Information and Digital Technologies (EFREI), Villejuif, France ‡ University of La Rochelle, La Rochelle, France Email: adysonmaia@great.ufc.br, dario.vieira@efrei.fr, miguel@great.ufc.br, yacine.ghamri@univ-lr.fr Abstract—This paper proposes a mechanism for uplink packet scheduler in LTE network in the context of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication. The proposed approach uses the current and past information of the system to satisfy the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, to ensure fairness in resource allocation and to control the congestion caused by M2M devices. We carried out some network simulations by using a NS-3 simulator so as to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The results indicate that our solution can reduce the impact of M2M communication on Human-to-Human (H2H) communication and avoid the problem of starvation, when compared to related approaches. Keywords—LTE; Internet of Things; IoT; Machine-to-Machine; M2M; uplink packet scheduler I. I NTRODUCTION In the Internet of Things (IoT), a great variety of smart objects (home appliances, automobiles, cell phones, etc.) will be connected to the Internet. In this new scenario, where these smart objects will be connected and interacting with each other, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication will play an important role in the deployment of IoT [1]. M2M commu- nication refers to the transmission and automatic collection of data from a remote source without, or with only limited, human intervention through a public network infrastructure (Wi-Fi, WiMax, UMTS, LTE, etc.) [2]. There is a large market potential for M2M communication, and the application fields of this communication are very wide [2]. Furthermore, the quantity of objects that will be connected in the future IoT is estimated at billions or even trillions [1]. Due to this vast number of smart objects, a large volume of traffic generated by the M2M communication is expected. Accordingly, this will exceed the volume generated by human-oriented communications (VoIP, media streaming, web browsing, etc.), also called Human-to-Human (H2H) communication, which are responsible for most of the traffic in the Internet at present. It is expected also that cellular network infrastructures will play a key role in the deployment of IoT, as well as for M2M communication, highlighting the significance of the LTE (Long Term Evolution) network for this deployment [3]. However, improvements in the LTE are necessary because of the intrinsic characteristics of M2M communication (discussed in more detail in Section II), which are different from H2H communication, for which the network was originally de- signed. Among these improvements, the uplink channel packet scheduler requires special attention. Existing solutions in the literature [4] that address schedul- ing for the current communication (H2H) in LTE are not suitable for M2M communication, because of the assumption of the low volume of services and the Quality of Service requirements (QoS) of H2H communication [5]. Subsequently, this is not the case for the majority of M2M applications, which have a huge amount of services and therefore different QoS requirements [5]. Furthermore, these solutions do not cope with the congestion caused by the deployment of a huge number of smart objects in the same area and, therefore, using the same shared resources. The current solutions that handle M2M communica- tion [5]–[10], which are discussed in Section III, have some shortcomings. One of them is that some of these solutions do not ensure the fair allocation of resources and may lead to the problem of starvation. Another weakness is related to either the lack of control over the impact caused by the introduction into the network of M2M communication on the performance of the H2H communication, or this kind of impact control being poorly carried out. Within this context, in this paper, we discuss the packet scheduler in the LTE radio network, taking into account both M2M and H2H communication, and we propose a new mechanism for scheduling packets to uplink channel, details of which are presented in Section IV. The proposed scheduler uses the current traffic information of each device as well as allocation logs to classify the traffic and also to prioritize the allocation of radio resources. We argue that the proposed approach can (i) control the impact of M2M communication on H2H, (ii) ensure fairness and thus avoid the problem of starvation and (iii) meet the QoS requirements of applications. We present in Section V the experiments through simulations and we also discuss the results gained. Finally, in Section VI, we discuss the conclusions and future works. II. OVERVIEW This section briefly describes some technologies on M2M communication and LTE, in order to provide to required background of this article’s proposal.