Medium Access Control Layer for Internet of Things Edge-Side Network Using Carrier-Sense Multiple Access Protocol

The Internet of Things (IoT) has recently received a great deal of research interest due to its broad range of applications. One of the important layers in IoT applications is known as edge computing where resource-constrained devices at the edge form a simple type of network to sense required data. A more powerful edge device is responsible for collecting all sensed data to be transferred to the upper layers. A critical focus is therefore placed on maximum rate of data collection, requiring effective and intelligent solutions to coordinate the channel access of the devices. Medium access control (MAC) protocols take this responsibility as their design mission. Carrier-sense multiple access (CSMA) has been a baseline MAC scheme and many previous traditional networks utilized a CSMA-based solution. The motivation of this paper is to study the performance of a typical network at the edge through the CSMA theme. A practical network is constructed to assess the channel throughput performance via a commercially available radio transceiver. The practical performance observations indicate the suitability of the proposed CSMA-based solution.