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Internet of Things (IoT) Operating Systems Management: Opportunities, Challenges, and Solution

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Internet of Things".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 January 2019) | Viewed by 84362

Special Issue Editors

Zühlke Group, Eschborn, Hessen, Germany
Interests: wireless computer networks; protocol design and operating systems for constrained devices
Department of Computer Networks, Jazan University,
Interests: Sensor Networks, Internet of Things, Computer Networking, Network Security, Trust Management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The ‘Thing’ in the Internet of Things is a piece of equipment having a combination of sensing, actuating, storage, or processing capabilities. These IoT devices possess unique characteristics, such as small memory, scarce energy resources, and limited processing power. Moreover, their ability to communicate with each other, or to the cloud, is typically very limited in terms of bandwidth and data rates. Due to these limitations, IoT devices need to manage their resources efficiently. Additionally, densification, randomness, and uncertainty make IoT device resource management a challenging task. An operating system (OS) acts as a resource manager for this complex IoT system. To handle the limited processing power and memory, an OS requires an effective process and memory management mechanism. IoT devices are often battery operated and are mostly deployed in remote, and frequently-harsh environments. Thus, efficient energy management in an OS is highly important. The main objective of an IoT system is to connect the physical world with services in the cloud in order to provide new services. Interactions with the physical world may happen through sensing operations, controlling actuators, or a combination of both. Collected data can be transferred directly to the cloud, preprocessed locally on IoT devices or in a distributed manner among the lower power nodes. To achieve this, the communication design, signal processing, data transmission, data reception, and radio sleep/wakeup mechanisms, e.g., radio duty cycling (RDC), need to be efficient in term of energy and communication. Further, an IoT OS may need to store, catalog and retrieve data using a file system. In order to cater to the vastly differing needs of IoT scenarios, IoT networks consist of a huge heterogeneity, both in terms of software and hardware. Tiny sensing nodes may operate purely by relying on energy harvesting mechanisms, infrequently sending sensor data to more powerful nodes, remaining in deep sleep modes for most of the time, while gateway nodes may be connected to a fixed power supply, relay sensor data from thousands of sensor nodes, and is responsible for management services, such as address assignment or computing routing information. Hence, resources managed by the OS can be very different and require very diverse policies. Consequently, the mechanisms, strategies, and data structures for IoT operating systems pose completely new challenges that require novel OS concepts and implementations.

This Special Issue focuses on the most recent advancement in interdisciplinary research areas encompassing IoT OSs, process, memory, energy, communication and file management. This Special Issue will bring together researchers from diverse fields, such as communication engineering, computer engineering, computer science, electrical and electronics engineering, bio-informatics, and mathematics. Through this Special Issue, we invite researchers from industry, academia and government organizations to discuss innovative ideas and contributions, demonstrate results and share standardization efforts on the IoT OSs and related areas.

Topics of interest include, but not limited to the following:

  • Process Management
    • (Real-time) Scheduling
    • Threading Model
    • Programming Model
    • Synchronization
  • Memory Management
    • Storage Allocation
    • Sharing and Distributed Memory
    • Fragmentation Prevention
    • Dynamic Buffer Handling
  • Energy Management
    • Efficient Usage of Hardware Sleep Modes
    • Sleep Cycle Management
    • Hibernating
  • Communication Management
    • Protocol Design
    • In-network Caching Strategies
    • Network Management
    • Medium Access Control (MAC) Layer Protocols
    • Radio Duty Cycling Protocols
  • File Management
    • Organization
    • Storage
  • Peripheral Devices
    • Sensor and Actuator (Auto)Configuration
    • Device Driver Initialization
    • Shared Buses

Dr. Yousaf Bin Zikria
Dr. Sung Won Kim
Dr. Oliver Hahm
Dr. Muhammad Khalil Afzal
Dr. Mohammed Y Aalsalem
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Process Management
  • Memory Management
  • Energy Management
  • Communication Management
  • File Management
  • Peripheral Devices

Published Papers (11 papers)

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Editorial

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10 pages, 704 KiB  
Editorial
Internet of Things (IoT) Operating Systems Management: Opportunities, Challenges, and Solution
by Yousaf Bin Zikria, Sung Won Kim, Oliver Hahm, Muhammad Khalil Afzal and Mohammed Y. Aalsalem
Sensors 2019, 19(8), 1793; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19081793 - 15 Apr 2019
Cited by 79 | Viewed by 11771
Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly growing and contributing drastically to improve the quality of life. Immense technological innovations and growth is a key factor in IoT advancements. Readily available low cost IoT hardware is essential for continuous adaptation of IoT. Advancements in [...] Read more.
Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly growing and contributing drastically to improve the quality of life. Immense technological innovations and growth is a key factor in IoT advancements. Readily available low cost IoT hardware is essential for continuous adaptation of IoT. Advancements in IoT Operating System (OS) to support these newly developed IoT hardware along with the recent standards and techniques for all the communication layers are the way forward. The variety of IoT OS availability demands to support interoperability that requires to follow standard set of rules for development and protocol functionalities to support heterogeneous deployment scenarios. IoT requires to be intelligent to self-adapt according to the network conditions. In this paper, we present brief overview of different IoT OSs, supported hardware, and future research directions. Therein, we provide overview of the accepted papers in our Special Issue on IoT OS management: opportunities, challenges, and solution. Finally, we conclude the manuscript. Full article

Research

Jump to: Editorial

29 pages, 6354 KiB  
Article
A Novel Internet of Things-Enabled Accident Detection and Reporting System for Smart City Environments
by Fizzah Bhatti, Munam Ali Shah, Carsten Maple and Saif Ul Islam
Sensors 2019, 19(9), 2071; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19092071 - 03 May 2019
Cited by 103 | Viewed by 21471
Abstract
Internet of Things-enabled Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are gaining significant attention in academic literature and industry, and are seen as a solution to enhancing road safety in smart cities. Due to the ever increasing number of vehicles, a significant rise in the number [...] Read more.
Internet of Things-enabled Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are gaining significant attention in academic literature and industry, and are seen as a solution to enhancing road safety in smart cities. Due to the ever increasing number of vehicles, a significant rise in the number of road accidents has been observed. Vehicles embedded with a plethora of sensors enable us to not only monitor the current situation of the vehicle and its surroundings but also facilitates the detection of incidents. Significant research, for example, has been conducted on accident rescue, particularly on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for efficient and prompt rescue operations. The majority of such works provide sophisticated solutions that focus on reducing response times. However, such solutions can be expensive and are not available in all types of vehicles. Given this, we present a novel Internet of Things-based accident detection and reporting system for a smart city environment. The proposed approach aims to take advantage of advanced specifications of smartphones to design and develop a low-cost solution for enhanced transportation systems that is deployable in legacy vehicles. In this context, a customized Android application is developed to gather information regarding speed, gravitational force, pressure, sound, and location. The speed is a factor that is used to help improve the identification of accidents. It arises because of clear differences in environmental conditions (e.g., noise, deceleration rate) that arise in low speed collisions, versus higher speed collisions). The information acquired is further processed to detect road incidents. Furthermore, a navigation system is also developed to report the incident to the nearest hospital. The proposed approach is validated through simulations and comparison with a real data set of road accidents acquired from Road Safety Open Repository, and shows promising results in terms of accuracy. Full article
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18 pages, 15602 KiB  
Article
Spatial–Temporal Sensing and Utilization in Full Duplex Spectrum-Heterogeneous Cognitive Radio Networks for the Internet of Things
by Waqas Khalid and Heejung Yu
Sensors 2019, 19(6), 1441; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19061441 - 23 Mar 2019
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 3250
Abstract
The continuous growth of interconnected devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) presents a challenge in terms of network resources. Cognitive radio (CR) is a promising technology that can address the IoT spectral demands by enabling an opportunistic spectrum access (OSA) scheme. The [...] Read more.
The continuous growth of interconnected devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) presents a challenge in terms of network resources. Cognitive radio (CR) is a promising technology that can address the IoT spectral demands by enabling an opportunistic spectrum access (OSA) scheme. The application of full duplex (FD) radios in spectrum sensing enables secondary users (SUs) to perform sensing and transmission simultaneously, and improves the utilization of the spectrum. However, random and dense distributions of FD-enabled SU transmitters (FD-SU TXs) with sensing capabilities in small-cell CR-IoT environments poses new challenges, and creates heterogeneous environments with different spectral opportunities. In this paper, we propose a spatial and temporal spectral-hole sensing framework for FD-SU TXs deployed in CR-IoT spectrum-heterogeneous environment. Incorporating the proposed sensing model, we present the analytical formulation and an evaluation of a utilization of spectrum (UoS) scheme for FD-SU TXs present at different spatial positions. The numerical results are evaluated under different network and sensing parameters to examine the sensitivities of different parameters. It is demonstrated that self-interference, primary user activity level, and the sensing outcomes in spatial and temporal domains have a significant influence on the utilization performance of spectrum. Full article
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21 pages, 2250 KiB  
Article
Transparent CoAP Services to IoT Endpoints through ICN Operator Networks
by Hasan Mahmood Aminul Islam, Dmitrij Lagutin, Antti Ylä-Jääski, Nikos Fotiou and Andrei Gurtov
Sensors 2019, 19(6), 1339; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19061339 - 17 Mar 2019
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3350
Abstract
The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a specialized web transfer protocol which is intended to be used for constrained networks and devices. CoAP and its extensions (e.g., CoAP observe and group communication) provide the potential for developing novel applications in the Internet-of-Things (IoT). [...] Read more.
The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is a specialized web transfer protocol which is intended to be used for constrained networks and devices. CoAP and its extensions (e.g., CoAP observe and group communication) provide the potential for developing novel applications in the Internet-of-Things (IoT). However, a full-fledged CoAP-based application may require significant computing capability, power, and storage capacity in IoT devices. To address these challenges, we present the design, implementation, and experimentation with the CoAP handler which provides transparent CoAP services through the ICN core network. In addition, we demonstrate how the CoAP traffic over an ICN network can unleash the full potential of the CoAP, shifting both overhead and complexity from the (constrained) endpoints to the ICN network. The experiments prove that the CoAP Handler helps to decrease the required computation complexity, communication overhead, and state management of the CoAP server. Full article
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20 pages, 1221 KiB  
Article
A Secured Proxy-Based Data Sharing Module in IoT Environments Using Blockchain
by Kwame Opuni-Boachie Obour Agyekum, Qi Xia, Emmanuel Boateng Sifah, Jianbin Gao, Hu Xia, Xiaojiang Du and Moshen Guizani
Sensors 2019, 19(5), 1235; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19051235 - 11 Mar 2019
Cited by 37 | Viewed by 6466
Abstract
Access and utilization of data are central to the cloud computing paradigm. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), the tendency of data sharing on the cloud has seen enormous growth. With data sharing comes numerous security and privacy issues. In [...] Read more.
Access and utilization of data are central to the cloud computing paradigm. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), the tendency of data sharing on the cloud has seen enormous growth. With data sharing comes numerous security and privacy issues. In the process of ensuring data confidentiality and fine-grained access control to data in the cloud, several studies have proposed Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) schemes, with Key Policy-ABE (KP-ABE) being the prominent one. Recent works have however suggested that the confidentiality of data is violated through collusion attacks between a revoked user and the cloud server. We present a secured and efficient Proxy Re-Encryption (PRE) scheme that incorporates an Inner-Product Encryption (IPE) scheme in which decryption of data is possible if the inner product of the private key, associated with a set of attributes specified by the data owner, and the associated ciphertext is equal to zero 0 . We utilize a blockchain network whose processing node acts as the proxy server and performs re-encryption on the data. In ensuring data confidentiality and preventing collusion attacks, the data are divided into two, with one part stored on the blockchain network and the other part stored on the cloud. Our approach also achieves fine-grained access control. Full article
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15 pages, 2557 KiB  
Article
Process Management in IoT Operating Systems: Cross-Influence between Processing and Communication Tasks in End-Devices
by Roberto Rodriguez-Zurrunero, Ramiro Utrilla, Alba Rozas and Alvaro Araujo
Sensors 2019, 19(4), 805; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19040805 - 16 Feb 2019
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 4997
Abstract
The emergence and spread of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies along with the edge computing paradigm has led to an increase in the computational load on sensor end-devices. These devices are now expected to provide high-level information instead of just raw sensor measurements. [...] Read more.
The emergence and spread of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies along with the edge computing paradigm has led to an increase in the computational load on sensor end-devices. These devices are now expected to provide high-level information instead of just raw sensor measurements. Therefore, the processing tasks must share the processor time with the communication tasks, and both of them may have strict timing constraints. In this work, we present an empirical study, from the edge computing perspective, of the process management carried out by an IoT Operating System (OS), showing the cross-influence between the processing and communication tasks in end-devices. We have conducted multiple tests in two real scenarios with a specific OS and a set of wireless protocols. In these tests, we have varied the processing and communication tasks timing parameters, as well as their assigned priority levels. The results obtained from these tests demonstrate that there is a close relationship between the characteristics of the processing tasks and the communication performance, especially when the processing computational load is high. In addition, these results also show that the computational load is not the only factor responsible for the communication performance degradation, as the relationship between the processing tasks and the communication protocols timing parameters also plays a role. These conclusions should be taken into account for future OSs and protocol developments. Full article
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13 pages, 1130 KiB  
Article
Information-Centric Network-Based Vehicular Communications: Overview and Research Opportunities
by Ikram Ud Din, Byung-Seo Kim, Suhaidi Hassan, Mohsen Guizani, Mohammed Atiquzzaman and Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues
Sensors 2018, 18(11), 3957; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18113957 - 15 Nov 2018
Cited by 39 | Viewed by 4607
Abstract
Information Centric Network (ICN) is expected to be the favorable deployable future Internet paradigm. ICN intends to replace the current IP-based model with the name-based content-centric model, as it aims at providing better security, scalability, and content distribution. However, it is a challenging [...] Read more.
Information Centric Network (ICN) is expected to be the favorable deployable future Internet paradigm. ICN intends to replace the current IP-based model with the name-based content-centric model, as it aims at providing better security, scalability, and content distribution. However, it is a challenging task to conceive how ICN can be linked with the other most emerging paradigm, i.e., Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET). In this article, we present an overview of the ICN-based VANET approach in line with its contributions and research challenges.In addition, the connectivity issues of vehicular ICN model is presented with some other emerging paradigms, such as Software Defined Network (SDN), Cloud, and Edge computing. Moreover, some ICN-based VANET research opportunities, in terms of security, mobility, routing, naming, caching, and fifth generation (5G) communications, are also covered at the end of the paper. Full article
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25 pages, 1208 KiB  
Article
Void Hole Avoidance for Reliable Data Delivery in IoT Enabled Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks
by Arshad Sher, Aasma Khan, Nadeem Javaid, Syed Hassan Ahmed, Mohammed Y Aalsalem and Wazir Zada Khan
Sensors 2018, 18(10), 3271; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18103271 - 28 Sep 2018
Cited by 39 | Viewed by 4244
Abstract
Due to the limited availability of battery power of the acoustic node, an efficient utilization is desired. Additionally, the aquatic environment is harsh; therefore, the battery cannot be replaced, which leaves the network prone to sudden failures. Thus, an efficient node battery dissipation [...] Read more.
Due to the limited availability of battery power of the acoustic node, an efficient utilization is desired. Additionally, the aquatic environment is harsh; therefore, the battery cannot be replaced, which leaves the network prone to sudden failures. Thus, an efficient node battery dissipation is required to prolong the network lifespan and optimize the available resources. In this paper, we propose four schemes: Adaptive transmission range in WDFAD-Depth-Based Routing (DBR) (A-DBR), Cluster-based WDFAD-DBR (C-DBR), Backward transmission-based WDFAD-DBR (B-DBR) and Collision Avoidance-based WDFAD-DBR (CA-DBR) for Internet of Things-enabled Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (IoT, UWSNs). A-DBR adaptively adjusts its transmission range to avoid the void node for forwarding data packets at the sink, while C-DBR minimizes end-to-end delay along with energy consumption by making small clusters of nodes gather data. In continuous transmission range adjustment, energy consumption increases exponentially; thus, in B-DBR, a fall back recovery mechanism is used to find an alternative route to deliver the data packet at the destination node with minimal energy dissipation; whereas, CA-DBR uses a fall back mechanism along with the selection of the potential node that has the minimum number of neighbors to minimize collision on the acoustic channel. Simulation results show that our schemes outperform the baseline solution in terms of average packet delivery ratio, energy tax, end-to-end delay and accumulated propagation distance. Full article
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30 pages, 877 KiB  
Article
IoT Operating System Based Fuzzy Inference System for Home Energy Management System in Smart Buildings
by Qurat-ul Ain, Sohail Iqbal, Safdar Abbas Khan, Asad Waqar Malik, Iftikhar Ahmad and Nadeem Javaid
Sensors 2018, 18(9), 2802; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18092802 - 25 Aug 2018
Cited by 61 | Viewed by 9885
Abstract
Energy consumption in the residential sector is 25% of all the sectors. The advent of smart appliances and intelligent sensors have increased the realization of home energy management systems. Acquiring balance between energy consumption and user comfort is in the spotlight when the [...] Read more.
Energy consumption in the residential sector is 25% of all the sectors. The advent of smart appliances and intelligent sensors have increased the realization of home energy management systems. Acquiring balance between energy consumption and user comfort is in the spotlight when the performance of the smart home is evaluated. Appliances of heating, ventilation and air conditioning constitute up to 64% of energy consumption in residential buildings. A number of research works have shown that fuzzy logic system integrated with other techniques is used with the main objective of energy consumption minimization. However, user comfort is often sacrificed in these techniques. In this paper, we have proposed a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) that uses humidity as an additional input parameter in order to maintain the thermostat set-points according to user comfort. Additionally, we have used indoor room temperature variation as a feedback to proposed FIS in order to get the better energy consumption. As the number of rules increase, the task of defining them in FIS becomes time consuming and eventually increases the chance of manual errors. We have also proposed the automatic rule base generation using the combinatorial method. The proposed techniques are evaluated using Mamdani FIS and Sugeno FIS. The proposed method provides a flexible and energy efficient decision-making system that maintains the user thermal comfort with the help of intelligent sensors. The proposed FIS system requires less memory and low processing power along with the use of sensors, making it possible to be used in the IoT operating system e.g., RIOT. Simulation results validate that the proposed technique reduces energy consumption by 28%. Full article
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16 pages, 6912 KiB  
Article
IoT Hierarchical Topology Strategy and Intelligentize Evaluation System of Diesel Engine in Complexity Environment
by Jiangshan Liu, Ming Chen, Tangfeng Yang and Jie Wu
Sensors 2018, 18(7), 2224; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18072224 - 10 Jul 2018
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 7879
Abstract
In complex discrete manufacturing environment, there used to be a poor network and an isolated information island in production line, which led to slow information feedback and low utilization ratio, hindering the construction of enterprise intelligence. To solve these problems, uncertain factors in [...] Read more.
In complex discrete manufacturing environment, there used to be a poor network and an isolated information island in production line, which led to slow information feedback and low utilization ratio, hindering the construction of enterprise intelligence. To solve these problems, uncertain factors in the production process and demands of sensor network were analyzed; hierarchical topology design method and the deployment strategy of the complexity industrial internet of things were proposed; and a big data analysis model and a system security protection system based on the network were established. The weight of each evaluation index was calculated using analytic hierarchy process, which established the intelligentized evaluation system and model. An actual production scene was also selected to validate the feasibility of the method. A diesel engine production workshop and the enterprise MES were used as an example to establish a network topology. The intelligence level based on both subjective and objective factors were evaluated and analyzed considering both quantitative and qualitative aspects. Analysis results show that the network topology design method and the intelligentize evaluation system were feasible, could improve the intelligence level effectively, and the network framework was expansible. Full article
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28 pages, 1724 KiB  
Article
Multiple Access Control for Cognitive Radio-Based IEEE 802.11ah Networks
by Muhammad Shafiq, Maqbool Ahmad, Azeem Irshad, Moneeb Gohar, Muhammad Usman, Muhammad Khalil Afzal, Jin-Ghoo Choi and Heejung Yu
Sensors 2018, 18(7), 2043; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18072043 - 26 Jun 2018
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 4608
Abstract
The proliferation of Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology and its reliance on the license-free Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) bands have rendered radio spectrum scarce. The IoT can nevertheless obtain great advantage from Cognitive Radio (CR) technology for efficient use of a spectrum, to be [...] Read more.
The proliferation of Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology and its reliance on the license-free Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) bands have rendered radio spectrum scarce. The IoT can nevertheless obtain great advantage from Cognitive Radio (CR) technology for efficient use of a spectrum, to be implemented in IEEE 802.11af-based primary networks. However, such networks require a geolocation database and a centralized architecture to communicate white space information on channels. On the other hand, in spectrum sensing, CR presents various challenges such as the Hidden Primary Terminal (HPT) problem. To this end, we focus on the most recently released standard, i.e., IEEE 802.11ah, in which IoT stations can first be classified into multiple groups to reduce collisions and then they can periodically access the channel. Therein, both services are similarly supported by a centralized server that requires signaling overhead to control the groups of stations. In addition, more regroupings are required over time due to the frequent variations in the number of participating stations, which leads to more overhead. In this paper, we propose a new Multiple Access Control (MAC) protocol for CR-based IEEE 802.11ah systems, called Restricted Access with Collision and Interference Resolution (RACIR). We introduce a decentralized group split algorithm that distributes the participating stations into multiple groups based on a probabilistic estimation in order to resolve collisions. Furthermore, we propose a decentralized channel access procedure that avoids the HPT problem and resolves interference with the incumbent receiver. We analyze the performance of our proposed MAC protocol in terms of normalized throughput, packet delay and energy consumption with the Markov model and analytic expressions. The results are quite promising, which makes the RACIR protocol a strong candidate for the CR-based IoT environment. Full article
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