Location-Based Medium Access Control for Next-Generation Industrial IoT Networks

A medium access control (MAC) protocol design is proposed in this paper for next-generation industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) networks. Considering a non-fully connected network with multiple access points (APs), we aim to connect a massive number of IIoT devices densely populating the network and minimize the delay in channel access without packet collisions. To achieve this objective, we propose a device location-based medium access control design, which integrates scheduled access and carrier sensing. In our design, devices are assigned to time slots based on their locations, and the assignments are coordinated among APs to eliminate collisions while maximizing channel utilization. To analyze the performance of the proposed design, we derive the average delay each device experiences with the proposed scheduling scheme and verify our analysis via simulations of an IIoT network with 19 APs and over 17000 devices. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed design in supporting massive connections while at the same time achieving low delay.