IoT Traffic Shaping and the Massive Access Problem

Abstract—IoT gateways aim to meet the deadlines and QoS

needs of packets from as many IoT devices as possible, though

this can lead to a form of congestion known as the Massive

Access Problem (MAP). While much work was conducted on

predictive or reactive scheduling schemes to match the arrival

process of packets to the service capabilities of IoT gateways, such

schemes may use substantial computation and communication

between gateways and IoT devices. This paper proves that

the recently proposed “Quasi-Deterministic-Transmission-Policy

(QDTP)” traffic shaping approach which delays packets at IoT

devices, substantially alleviates the MAP: QDTP does not increase

overall end-to-end delay and reduces gateway queue length. We

then introduce the Adaptive Non-Deterministic Transmission Policy

(ANTP) that requires only one packet buffer at the gateway,

offering substantial QoS improvement over FIFO scheduling.