Modelling of a MAC protocol for mobile M2M communications

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications is one of the enabling technologies for connecting massive number of devices to the Internet of Things (IoT). M2M communications have different characteristics than human-to-human (H2H) communications. In this work, we assume that the machines are mobile, as a result, the number of machines served by the network is variable. We consider a contention-based MAC protocol for M2M communications. The transmissions are organized into frames and each machine is assumed to generate probabilistically one or zero packet per frame. The machines have been divided into different types according to their packet generation probabilities. We assume that a machine will attempt transmission of a packet until it generates a new packet. A packet will be lost if it hasnot been successfully transmitted by the time the machine generates a new packet. We have derived packet loss probability for each type of machines. The numerical results show that very low packet loss probability may be achieved for a wide range of traffic load. The results of this paper may be used in the dimensioning of M2M networks.