Enhanced Preamble Based MAC Mechanism for IIoT-oriented PLC Network

TL;DR

This paper introduces E-PMAC, an enhanced MAC mechanism for IIoT power line communication networks, improving robustness, reducing complexity, and accelerating networking compared to existing protocols.

Contribution

The paper presents E-PMAC, a novel preamble-based MAC mechanism with advanced delay calibration, slot allocation, and network process design for better performance in IIoT PLC networks.

Findings

E-PMAC reduces networking time compared to IEEE1901.1 and P-MAC.

E-PMAC has lower complexity than P-MAC.

Simulation confirms improved efficiency of E-PMAC in multi-layer networks.

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an enhanced preamble based media access control mechanism (E-PMAC), which can be applied in power line communication (PLC) network for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). We introduce detailed technologies used in E-PMAC, including delay calibration mechanism, preamble design, and slot allocation algorithm. With these technologies, E-PMAC is more robust than existing preamble based MAC mechanism (P-MAC). Besides, we analyze the disadvantage of P-MAC in multi-layer networking and design the networking process of E-PMAC to accelerate networking process. We analyze the complexity of networking process in P-MAC and E-PMAC and prove that E-PMAC has lower complexity than P-MAC. Finally, we simulate the single-layer networking and multi-layer networking of E-PMAC, P-MAC, and existing PLC protocol, i.e. , IEEE1901.1. The simulation results indicate that E-PMAC spends much less time in networking than IEEE1901.1 and P-MAC. Finally, with our work, a PLC network based on E-PMAC mechanism can be realized.