Performance Simulation Tools for MAC Protocols in the Internet of Things.

The success of any newly designed protocol lies on the fact of the accurate and efficient use of simulation tools. The real testing of proposed algorithms and models are expensive and time consuming. In this scenario, simulation tools play a vital role to measure the effectiveness and correctness of any new models or schemes. On the other hand, the Internet of things (IoT) is one of the emerging technologies around the world. IoT is a technological ecosystem where devices are connected to each other and can exchange information without any human intervention. An IoT system generally suffers from two major problems: device resource restriction and protocol design. To handle these problems, a robust and resilient medium access control (MAC) protocol is crucial for numerous machine-type devices to concurrently access the channel in IoT. A MAC protocol affects not only system performance but also energy efficiency. In this paper, various performance evaluation tools, which are used for evaluating MAC protocols for IoT, are discussed and compared with each other in terms of major features, characteristics, pros, and cons.