  Cellular networks that are traditionally designed for human-type
communication (HTC) have the potential to provide cost effective connectivity
to machine-type communication (MTC). However, MTC is characterized by
unprecedented traffic in cellular networks, thus posing a challenge to its
successful incorporation. In this work, we propose a unified framework for
amicable coexistence of MTC and HTC. We consider a heterogeneous network where
machine-type devices coexist with enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) devices and
propose transceiver techniques that promote efficient signal recovery from
these devices. For this, we present an eMBB pilot and MTC data generation
strategy that facilitates joint coherent decoding of eMBB data and non-coherent
decoding of MTC data. Furthermore, we assess the feasibility of coexistence
using receiver operating characteristics, outage probability, and normalized
mean square error (NMSE). Our numerical results reveal that a harmonious
coexistence of the heterogeneous services can be achieved with properly
configured average signal-to-noise ratios and pilot length.
