  In this two-part paper, we propose a novel medium access control (MAC)
protocol for machine-type communications in the industrial internet of things.
The considered use case features a limited geographical area and a massive
number of devices with sporadic data traffic and different priority types. We
target at supporting the devices while satisfying their quality of service
(QoS) requirements with a single access point and a single channel, which
necessitates a customized design that can significantly improve the MAC
performance. In Part I of this paper, we present the MAC protocol that
comprises a new slot structure, corresponding channel access procedure, and
mechanisms for supporting high device density and providing differentiated QoS.
A key idea behind this protocol is sensing-based distributed coordination for
significantly improving channel utilization. To characterize the proposed
protocol, we analyze its delay performance based on the packet arrival rates of
devices. The analytical results provide insights and lay the groundwork for the
fine-grained scheduling with QoS guarantee as presented in Part II.
