O-MAC: Opportunistic MAC Protocol for M2M Communication in WiFi White Spaces

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication comprises of autonomous devices communicating with each other without human intervention. The explosive growth in devices using an M2M communication and the shortage of spectrum has made network access for such devices a challenging problem. While M2M communication in the unlicensed bands is attractive from an economic perspective, such bands are also under use by existing technologies, such as WiFi. In this letter, we propose a new opportunistic medium access control protocol to allow an M2M communication within white spaces (i.e., periods without traffic) of WiFi networks. The proposed protocol increases the effective utilization of the channel without any significant impact on existing WiFi networks.