Modelling machine type communication in IEEE 802.11ah networks

Wi-Fi was originally designed to provide broadband wireless Internet access for devices which generate rather heavy streams. And Wi-Fi succeeded. The coming revolution of the Internet of Things with myriads of autonomous devices and machine type communications (MTC) traffic raises a question: can the Wi-Fi success story be repeated in the area of MTC? Started in 2010, IEEE 802.11 Task Group ah (TGah) has developed a draft amendment to the IEEE 802.11 standard, adapting Wi-Fi for MTC requirements. The performance of novel channel access enhancements in MTC scenarios can hardly be studied with models from Bianchi´s clan, which typically assume that traffic load does not change with time. This paper contributes with a pioneer analytical approach to study Wi-Fi-based MTC, which can be used to investigate and customize many mechanisms developed by TGah.