Delay-aware energy-efficient slot scheduling medium access control for internet of things low-power networks

Abstract

The increasing deployment of internet of things (IoT) low-power networks (LPNs) introduce a fundamental challenge in achieving low-latency communication while maintaining strict energy constraints under dynamic and heterogeneous traffic conditions. Existing medium access control (MAC) protocols either rely on rigid time-division scheduling, leading to poor adaptability, or contention-based access, resulting in unpredictable delay and energy inefficiency. This paper proposes a delay-aware energy-efficient slot scheduling MAC protocol (IDAS-MAC), a lightweight and distributed framework that integrates priority-based scheduling, adaptive duty cycling, and hybrid slot management. The proposed approach introduces a novel two-hop contention-aware mechanism and modular arithmetic-based slot ownership to enable scalable, collision-aware, and delay-sensitive communication without centralized coordination. Unlike recent RL-based MAC protocols, the proposed scheme eliminates training overhead while maintaining adaptability to dynamic traffic patterns. Simulation results demonstrate that IDAS-MAC substantially reduces energy consumption and packet delay while improving throughput and processing efficiency compared with the considered conventional and recent MAC protocols. These results validate its suitability for energy-constrained and delay-critical IoT applications.