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

Abstract

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. 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 work is proposing a Medium Access Control (MAC) mechanism addressing these performance metrics and best suitable for wireless IoT-Blockchain system. The proposed MAC protocol is based on the widely used IEEE 802.11 protocol, Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) basic access.