IEEE 802.15.4e: a Survey

Several studies have highlighted that the IEEE 802.15.4 standard presents a number of limitations such as low reliability, unbounded packet delays and no protection against interference/fading, that prevent its adoption in applications with stringent requirements in terms of reliability and latency. Recently, the IEEE has released the 802.15.4e amendment that introduces a number of enhancements/modifications to the MAC layer of the original standard in order to overcome such limitations. In this paper we provide a clear and structured overview of all the new 802.15.4e mechanisms. After a general introduction to the 802.15.4e standard, we describe the details of the main 802.15.4e MAC behavior modes, namely Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH), Deterministic and Synchronous Multi-channel Extension (DSME), and Low Latency Deterministic Network (LLDN). For each of them, we provide a detailed description and highlight the main features and possible application domains. Also, we survey the current literature and summarize open research issues

A Load Balancing Algorithm for Resource Allocation in IEEE 802.15.4e Networks

The recently created IETF 6TiSCH working group combines the high reliability and low-energy consumption of IEEE 802.15.4e Time Slotted Channel Hopping with IPv6 for industrial Internet of Things. We propose a distributed link scheduling algorithm, called Local Voting, for 6TiSCH networks that adapts the schedule to the network conditions. The algorithm tries to equalize the link load (defined as the ratio of the queue length over the number of allocated cells) through cell reallocation. Local Voting calculates the number of cells to be added or released by the 6TiSCH Operation Sublayer (6top). Compared to a representative algorithm from the literature, Local Voting provides simultaneously high reliability and low end-to-end latency while consuming significantly less energy. Its performance has been examined and compared to On-the-fly algorithm in 6TiSCH simulator by modeling an industrial environment with 50 sensors

An Analytical Model for Wireless Mesh Networks with Collision-Free TDMA and Finite Queues

Wireless mesh networks are a promising technology for connecting sensors and actuators with high flexibility and low investment costs. In industrial applications, however, reliability is essential. Therefore, two time-slotted medium access methods, DSME and TSCH, were added to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. They allow collision-free communication in multi-hop networks and provide channel hopping for mitigating external interferences. The slot schedule used in these networks is of high importance for the network performance. This paper supports the development of efficient schedules by providing an analytical model for the assessment of such schedules, focused on TSCH. A Markov chain model for the finite queue on every node is introduced that takes the slot distribution into account. The models of all nodes are interconnected to calculate network metrics such as packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay and throughput. An evaluation compares the model with a simulation of the Orchestra schedule. The model is applied to Orchestra as well as to two simple distributed scheduling algorithms to demonstrate the importance of traffic-awareness for achieving high throughput.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figure

Efficiency enhancement using optimized static scheduling technique in TSCH networks

In recent times, the reliable and real-time data transmission becomes a mandatory requirement for various industries and organizations due to the large utilization of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. However, the IoT devices need high reliability, precise data exchange and low power utilization which cannot be achieved by the conventional Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols due to link failures and high interferences in the network. Therefore, the Time-Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) networks can be used for link scheduling under the IEEE 802.15.4e standard. In this paper, we propose an Optimized Static Scheduling Technique (OSST) for the link scheduling in IEEE 802.15.4e based TSCH networks. In OSST the link schedule is optimized by considering the packet latency information during transmission by checking the status of the transmitted packets as well as keeping track of the lost data packets from source to destination nodes. We evaluate the proposed OSST model using 6TiSCH Simulator and compare the different performance metrics with Simple distributed TSCH Scheduling

Hybrid schedule management in 6TiSCH networks : the coexistence of determinism and flexibility

With the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), Industry 4.0 and Cyber-Physical System (CPS) concepts, there is a tremendous change ongoing in industrial applications that is imposing increasingly diverse and demanding network dynamics and requirements with a wider and more fine-grained scale. The purpose of this article is to investigate how a Hybrid Schedule Management in 6TiSCH architecture can be used to achieve the coexistence of applications with heavily diverse networking requirements. We study the fundamental functionalities and also describe network scenarios where such a hybrid scheduling approach can be used. In addition, we present the details about the design and implementation of the first 6TiSCH Centralized Scheduling Framework based on CoMI. We also provide theoretical and experimental analysis where we study the cost of schedule management operations and illustrate the operation of the CoMI-based 6TiSCH Schedule Management