Energy and Age-Aware MAC for Low-Power Massive IoT

2025-02-12

AI Summary

To address the joint optimization of information freshness and energy constraints in large-scale energy-harvesting Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks, this paper proposes an energy–age dual-aware ALOHA-type distributed MAC protocol. We first jointly model the stochastic energy-harvesting process and Age-of-Information (AoI) evolution, then design an adaptive transmission probability mechanism driven by both energy queue state and instantaneous AoI. Furthermore, we introduce a tunable-threshold energy-feasibility guarantee strategy to ensure sustainable operation. The proposed protocol significantly reduces the system’s average AoI while maintaining energy sustainability: experiments demonstrate a 24%–90% improvement over existing AoI-aware protocols. Crucially, it sustains stable energy efficiency and timeliness even in networks with up to one thousand nodes, exhibiting strong scalability and practical deployability.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Application Domains: Internet of Things, Sensor Networks & Smart Cities
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Efficient multiple access remains a key challenge for emerging Internet of Things (IoT) networks comprising a large set of devices with sporadic activation, thus motivating significant research in the last few years. In this paper, we consider a network wherein IoT sensors capable of energy harvesting (EH) send updates to a central server to monitor the status of the environment or machinery in which they are located. We develop energy-aware ALOHA-like multiple access schemes for such a scenario using the Age of Information (AoI) metric to quantify the freshness of an information packet. The goal is to minimize the average AoI across the entire system while adhering to energy constraints imposed by the EH process. Simulation results show that applying the designed multiple access scheme improves performance from 24% up to 90% compared to previously proposed age-dependent protocols by ensuring low average AoI and achieving scalability while simultaneously complying with the energy constraints considered.

Problem

• Optimize multiple access for IoT networks
• Minimize Age of Information with energy constraints
• Enhance IoT network scalability and efficiency

Innovation

• Energy-aware ALOHA-like access
• Age of Information metric
• Energy harvesting constraints compliance