Characterizing Delay and Control Traffic of the Cellular MME with IoT Support

Massive Internet-of-things (MIoT) represents one of the main use cases of 5G, as well as one of the most challenging ones. Accordingly, MIoT traffic is given special treatment in the core network, with the Mobility Management Entity (MME) serving both control and data traffic. In this context, it is critical to properly dimension the MME and to adapt its capability to traffic fluctuations. To this end, we present a compact, closed form linking the number of IoT sources with the rate at which bearers are requested from the MME, and such a rate delay incurred by MME operations. Our model represents a valuable tool to make effective, realtime scaling decisions in virtualized cellular core networks.