M2M over CDMA2000 1x case studies

In recent years, M2M (machine to machine) communications has increasingly been seen as a new growth area for wide-area wireless technologies which were designed for voice and high-speed packet data applications. In this paper, we use simulations to estimate the capacity of M2M applications over one of the widely used 3G wireless systems, CDMA2000 1x. We present capacity estimates of the CDMA2000 1x system for applications such as SMS, smart grid and vehicle tracking, under different network loading conditions. Our simulations show that the capacity of the aforementioned applications is reverse-link limited. In particular, the most commonly used configuration of reverse access channel in existing networks severely limits the M2M capacity. With better network configuration, use of enhanced access channel, and reverse link interference cancellation, the M2M capacity can be significantly improved. Our simulations show that the SMS capacity over 1x can reach about 2,400 SMS's per minute per sector on a single CDMA2000 1x carrier. In addition, the optimized network can support 56,000 smart-grid node or track approximately 2,900 vehicles per sector per 1.25MHz.