The present disclosure presents embodiments of a system and method for improved uplink transmission management in a network that includes one or more machine-type communication (MTC) devices. For example, in an aspect, the present disclosure presents a method of cluster head selection for a MTC device cluster, the method comprising transmitting a polling message from an eNodeB to one or more MTC devices of the MTC cluster, receiving one or more polling responses at the eNodeB from the one or more MTC devices, and determining the set of cluster heads based on the one or more polling responses; and transmitting cluster head information associated with each cluster head of the set of cluster heads to the one or more MTC devices.