IoT WSN MAC Protocol: Simulation Analysis of Minimum Packets in Queue Nodes for Medium Access Contention

This paper analyzes the performance of the PSA-MAC (Priority Sink Access-MAC) protocol, specifically when using the packet aggregation transmission mode (APT). In APT mode, frames that group several packets are transmitted, making the transmission process more efficient. On the other hand, in PSA-MAC, the nodes are activated and contend for the medium when at least one packet has arrived in their queue. This can cause the APT mode not to be used to its full potential since the nodes can attempt to transmit even if they have not completed the number of packets queued, according to the APT configuration. The introduction of a mechanism that allows the variation of the minimum number of queued packets for node activation is proposed. With this mechanism, queue nodes must wait for more packets to achieve their activation. The study has been carried out by means of a discrete event simulator developed in C to imitate the WSN scenario. Average power consumption, average packet delay, and packet loss probability have been considered as performance parameters. Energy savings results of up to 30% are observed due to the incorporation of this mechanism. However, in terms of packet delay, the performance may deteriorate for low traffic loads.