Performance Evaluation of Asynchronous Pulse Code Multiple Access in Massive IoT Networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized the way we interact with everyday objects by connecting sensors/actuators to the Internet to monitor and control various aspects of our environment. As the number of IoT devices continues to grow, efficient medium access control protocols are needed to ensure that communication takes place in a reliable and scalable manner. In this paper, we investigate the performance of the Asynchronous Pulse Code Multiple Access (APCMA) protocol in massive IoT scenarios through simulations and analysis. We show that APCMA is able to outperform CSMA/CA in terms of the number of successfully transmitted messages in scenarios with up to 30,000 transmitting sensor nodes while also being able to utilize the channel more efficiently. We also examine the sensitivity of APCMA’s performance with respect to its parameters.