IEEE 802.11ax based Medium Access Design for Wireless IoT-Blockchain Networks

Abstract

Blockchain technology has attracted the attention of many researchers in several different application fields. The use of blockchain in Internet of Things (IoT) and Wireless Sensors Networks (WSN) has been analyzed and considered as a promising solution to many of the IoT limitations. Communication is a very basic essence of the blockchain network and must be carefully planned while integrating with IoT, where an extremely large number of devices are interconnected and could have a serious impact on security and performance of the network. In this work, blockchain nodes are assumed to use wireless channels to communicate among themselves and other elements of the IoT setup. These communications can be in unicast and broadcast manner, where transmission latency and throughput are significant metrics that might jeopardize the overall system. This paper will propose a Medium Access Control (MAC) mechanism for wireless IoT-Blockchain system, while addressing these performance metrics. The proposed MAC protocol is based on the widely used IEEE 802.11ax MAC protocol, Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) basic access mechanism. The model is then simulated within NS-3 to observe the delay and throughput over several different setups.