On MAC Protocols Performance for M2M Communications

The Internet of Things (IoT) aims to interconnect most of the devices and equipment that surround us. One of the basic components of this new paradigm is machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, since they guarantee the interaction between the devices. One characteristic of M2M scenarios is the presence of many devices communicating with each other. This, along with the fact that communication is carried out through shared channels, causes the need to use medium access control (MAC) protocols. These guarantee the orderly and efficient use of the channel. In this paper, the performance of three well known MAC protocols; Slotted Aloha, FASA, and DPCF are evaluated through simulations. Results indicate that DPCF outperforms the other two protocols in terms of goodput and energy consumption. These advantages are achieved at the expense of increasing the complexity of the channel access mechanism compared to the complexity of Slotted Aloha and FASA.