Goodbye, ALOHA

• Published in: IEEE access 2016-01, Vol.4, p.2029-2044
• Main Authors: Laya, Andres, Kalalas, Charalampos, Vazquez-Gallego, Francisco, Alonso, Luis, Alonso-Zarate, Jesus
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 4G mobile communication; Access control; Access protocols; Algorithms; Bluetooth; Cellular networks; Communication networks; Communications; Communications technology; Computer network protocols; Comunicacions mòbils, Sistemes de; Comunicació sense fil, Sistemes de; Data-collection; Energy-Consumption; Enginyeria de la telecomunicació; Frame slotted-ALOHA; IEEE 802.11E; Internet of Things; M2M communications; Machine-to-machine communications; Media Access Protocol; Mobile communication systems; Networks; Performance evaluation; Protocol (computers); Protocols; Protocols de comunicació; Protocols de xarxes d'ordinadors; Radio access networks; Radiocomunicació i exploració electromagnètica; Random-access; RFID tags; Sensors; Telecommunication traffic; Telemàtica i xarxes d'ordinadors; Traffic congestion; Wireless communication; Wireless communication systems; Wireless communications; Wireless networks; Wireless sensor networks; Zigbee; Àrees temàtiques de la UPC
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2016.2557758

The vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) to interconnect and Internet-connect everyday people, objects, and machines poses new challenges in the design of wireless communication networks. The design of medium access control (MAC) protocols has been traditionally an intense area of research due to their high impact on the overall performance of wireless communications. The majority of research activities in this field deal with different variations of protocols somehow based on ALOHA, either with or without listen before talk, i.e., carrier sensing multiple access. These protocols operate well under low traffic loads and low number of simultaneous devices. However, they suffer from congestion as the traffic load and the number of devices increase. For this reason, unless revisited, the MAC layer can become a bottleneck for the success of the IoT. In this paper, we provide an overview of the existing MAC solutions for the IoT, describing current limitations and envisioned challenges for the near future. Motivated by those, we identify a family of simple algorithms based on distributed queueing (DQ), which can operate for an infinite number of devices generating any traffic load and pattern. A description of the DQ mechanism is provided and most relevant existing studies of DQ applied in different scenarios are described in this paper. In addition, we provide a novel performance evaluation of DQ when applied for the IoT. Finally, a description of the very first demo of DQ for its use in the IoT is also included in this paper.