The dramatic growth of machine-to-machine (M2M) communication in cellular networks brings the challenge of satisfying the quality of service (QoS) requirements of a large number of M2M devices with limited radio resources. In this paper we propose an optimization framework for the semi-persistent scheduling of M2M transmissions based on the exploitation of their periodicity with the goal of reducing the overhead of the signaling required for connection initiation and scheduling. The goal of the ...