USF inventors have developed a Beamforming Slotted Aloha Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (BF-SA-NOMA) random access protocol that is easy to implement, scalable and tailored for the limited complexity requirements of IoT devices. The protocol uses multiple hypothesis testing to determine the number of active IoT devices in the medium and backs off to conserve power by limiting computations if the medium is too crowded. The protocol also addresses channel access delay problem by reducing the collision probability and consequently lowering the average back-off delay via beamforming. Throughput improves significantly compared to conventional protocols as the number of devices increase asymptotically.
BF-SAN Protocol Phases