Adaptive flow-level scheduling for the IoT MAC

TL;DR

This paper introduces an adaptive, reservation-based MAC protocol tailored for high-density IoT/M2M networks, focusing on flow-level scheduling, minimal overhead, and dynamic adaptation to meet strict QoS requirements.

Contribution

It proposes a novel flow-level, deadline-aware MAC design that adapts dynamically, addressing the limitations of traditional distributed CSMA in dense IoT environments.

Findings

Reduces overhead through flow-level contention

Improves QoS adherence with deadline-aware scheduling

Adapts MAC parameters dynamically to workload changes

Abstract

Over the past decade, distributed CSMA, which forms the basis for WiFi, has been deployed ubiquitously to provide seamless and high-speed mobile internet access. However, distributed CSMA might not be ideal for future IoT/M2M applications, where the density of connected devices/sensors/controllers is expected to be orders of magnitude higher than that in present wireless networks. In such high-density networks, the overhead associated with completely distributed MAC protocols will become a bottleneck. Moreover, IoT communications are likely to have strict QoS requirements, for which the `best-effort' scheduling by present WiFi networks may be unsuitable. This calls for a clean-slate redesign of the wireless MAC taking into account the requirements for future IoT/M2M networks. In this paper, we propose a reservation-based (for minimal overhead) wireless MAC designed specifically with IoT/M2M applications in mind. The key features include: (i) flow-level, rather than packet level contention to minimize overhead, (ii) deadline aware, reservation based scheduling, and (iii) the ability to dynamically adapt the MAC parameters with changing workload.