An Efficient Proposed MAC Protocol for M2M Networks

Machine to machine (M2M) communications refer to the technology that enables huge number of devices to be wired or wireless communication with each other’s. Neither the contention based medium access control (MAC) protocols nor the reservation based MAC protocols can provide a flexible, scalable solution for M2M networks. That is because of the huge number of communicating devices. In this paper, an efficient proposed MAC protocol for M2M networks is suggested. It is divided into three periods, namely the notification, the contention and the transmission periods. During the contention period, the contention is occurred with equal probabilities between the devices which have traffic to be sent. The non-persistent carrier sense multiple access protocol is selected for the contention strategy. In the notification period, the devices get information about the contention state. Furthermore, the transmission time slots location for the succeeded ones are announced. Finally, in the transmission period, the packets from each successful contended device are sent. This is done using time division multiple access (TDMA) strategy in the reserved time slot. Moreover, more than one device can transmit in one TDMA slot as long as the signal to interference plus noise ratio condition is not violated. In addition, the analytical analysis of the proposed MAC protocol is produced. Furthermore, extensive simulation programs are executed using MATLAB to measure the system performance. The system throughput, average delay time, and packet collision ratio are our performance metrics. Further, our MAC protocol outperforms other traditional ones.