Satisfying strict deadlines for cellular Internet of Things through hybrid multiple access

Abstract

Latency‐constrained aspects of cellular Internet of Things (IoT) applications rely on Ultra‐Reliable and Low Latency Communications (URLLC), which highlight research on satisfying strict deadlines. In this study, we address the problem of latency‐constrained communications with strict deadlines under average power constraint using Hybrid Multiple Access (MA), which consists of both Orthogonal MA (OMA) and power domain Non‐Orthogonal MA (NOMA) as transmission scheme options. We aim to maximize the timely throughput, which represents the average number of successfully transmitted packets before deadline expiration, where expired packets are dropped from the buffer. We use Lyapunov stochastic optimization methods to develop a dynamic power assignment algorithm for minimizing the packet drop rate while satisfying time average power constraints. Moreover, we propose a flexible packet dropping mechanism called Early Packet Dropping (EPD) to detect likely to become expired packets and drop them immediately. Numerical results show that Hybrid MA improves the timely throughput compared to conventional OMA by up to 46%$$ 46\% $$ and on average by more than 21%$$ 21\% $$. With EPD, these timely throughput gains improve to 53%$$ 53\% $$ and 24.5%$$ 24.5\% $$, respectively.