On the Efficiency of Carrier Sense Multiple Access in NB-Fi Networks

The NB-Fi protocol is a promising solution for the implementation of low power wide area networks. It was adopted in 2022 as a national standard of the Russian Federation. The NB-Fi devices transmit data in unlicensed spectrum and can operate in two modes: with and without carrier sense. This paper compares the power consumption of NB-Fi devices that use these modes with different carrier sense implementations. It is shown that even at low traffic intensity (more than 30 packets per second) and the presence of hidden devices in the network, the carrier sense mode allows reducing significantly the power consumption of devices in comparison with the mode without carrier sense.