Internet of Things (IoT) devices communicate using a variety of protocols,
differing in many aspects, with the channel access method being one of the most
important. Most of the transmission technologies explicitly designed for IoT
and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication use either an ALOHA-based channel
access or some type of Listen Before Talk (LBT) strategy, based on carrier
sensing. In this paper, we provide a comparative overview of the uncoordinated
channel access methods for IoT technologies, namely ALOHA-based and LBT
schemes, in relation with the ETSI and FCC regulatory frameworks. Furthermore,
we provide a performance comparison of these access schemes, both in terms of
successful transmissions and energy efficiency, in a typical IoT deployment.
Results show that LBT is effective in reducing inter-node interference even for
long-range transmissions, though the energy efficiency can be lower than that
provided by ALOHA methods. The adoption of rate-adaptation schemes,
furthermore, lowers the energy consumption while improving the fairness among
nodes at different distances from the receiver. Coexistence issues are also
investigated, showing that in massive deployments LBT is severely affected by
the presence of ALOHA devices in the same area
