Fault-Tolerant and Medium Access Control (FTMAC) protocol for IoT over VLC

Abstract

The emerging field of Internet of Things (IoT) and revolution in smartphone usage are driving the high bandwidth growth in the access networks. Therefore, the conventional wireless communication techniques are getting exhausted in supporting the high data-rate, larger spectrum, and reliability requirements. Visible Light Communication (VLC) opens up the new era in the wireless communication satisfying the high data-rate, larger spectrum, reliability, low power and cost requirements of the modern networks. In this paper, we present the novel idea of the Fault-Tolerant Medium Access Control protocol for IoT over VLC applications, which we call FTMAC-IoT-VLC. This protocol provides the efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) for the IoT applications. In the proposed strategy, the primary data communication has been carried out over a VLC link. Whereas, in the event of VLC link failures, communication has been restored over a Wi-Fi link. Moreover, efficient MAC allocation resolves the conflicts across the devices while accessing the channels and improves the throughput.