Massive Machine-Type Communications towards 6G

Dear Colleagues,

As the steadily increasing number of 5G deployments around the world is rendering fifth-generation wireless networks a reality, the attention of the research community is focused on the evolution that will characterize the next decade, shaping the vision for 6G. Massive machine-type communications (mMTC) will be a cornerstone of such systems, enabling the interconnection of an unprecedented number of devices to support a multitude of IoT services on a global scale, thanks to a synergy of terrestrial and non-terrestrial network components. Applications in this blooming field are characterized by a myriad of devices which access the communication infrastructure sporadically, generating short packets (e.g., to report metering or tracking information) that have to be delivered, exploiting the available spectrum resources efficiently, even in the absence of coordination. Future mMTC applications will demand substantially better reliability and lower latency, as well as further improvements on device localization, especially in indoor environments, to support novel location-based services. From this standpoint, mMTC pose novel and unique system design challenges, calling for profound innovations at all layers of the communications stack that span, among many others, signal detection, coding for short packets, and advanced grant-free access protocols. While significant results have been obtained in this direction, further research is needed to support the evolution of IoT services towards 6G.

This Special Issue of Sensors aims at stimulating novel contributions on the topic and collecting state-of-the-art research papers that help shape the evolution of mMTC in next-generation systems.

Dr. Andrea Munari
Dr. Dejan Vukobratovic
Dr. Nurul Huda Mahmood
Guest Editors

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