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

Energy Consumption and Performance of IEEE 802.15.4e TSCH and DSME

International audienceThe recent IEEE 802.15.4e standard has introduced two interesting modes of operation: Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) and Deterministic and Synchronous Multi-channel Extension (DSME). Both provide a mix of time and frequency division to improve the performance of the previously available synchronized MAC mode (beacon-enabled 802.15.4). In this paper, we compare the performance of DSME and TSCH with respect to the energy consumption, throughput, and delay through an analysis of their respective ways of operation. We use an energy consumption model coming from our previous experience on the design of recent energy harvesting motes for the GreenNet platform. Our results show that DSME performs slightly better in terms of the energy consumption spent in data transfers. Both protocols exhibit similar delays for a given duty cycle, nevertheless, TSCH obtains shorter delay and higher throughput for low duty cycles. For higher duty cycles, TSCH results in lower throughput—for applications that send little data, the fixed slot configuration of TSCH results in wasted bandwidth. DSME can allocate shorter slots, which is beneficial for applications that transmit short packets

Improving network formation in IEEE 802.15.4e DSME

Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks are becoming attractive also for industrial applications, since recent standardization efforts have introduced significant improvement to reliability and deterministic communication delays. In this context, IEEE 802.15.4e is widely considered the major improvement, introducing many enhancements to the original IEEE 802.15.4 standard aimed at supporting critical applications. Among the new defined MAC protocols, Deterministic and Synchronous Multi-channel Extension (DSME) represents the most suitable option for applications with time-varying requirements. In this paper, an analysis of the IEEE 802.15.4 DSME MAC protocol during network formation is presented. The goal is to study the protocol performance and propose solutions to reduce the network formation time, improving energy and resource efficiency. To carry out the performance evaluation, DSME has been fully implemented in Contiki OS, an actual operating system for sensor nodes. The study has highlighted issues and inefficiencies in the network formation process, allowing to consequently propose effective solutions. In particular, it is proposed a set of guidelines for DSME configuration to the original MAC protocol that are proved to increase significantly the network formation efficiency

A Performance-to-Cost Analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC With 802.15.4e MAC Modes

[EN] The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is one of the widely adopted networking specification for Internet of Things (IoT). It defines several physical layer (PHY) options and medium access control (MAC) sub-layer protocols for interconnection of constrained wireless devices. These devices are usually battery-powered and need to support requirements like low-power consumption and low-data rates. The standard has been revised twice to incorporate new PHY layers and improvements learned from implementations. Research in this direction has been primarily centered around improving the energy consumption of devices. Recently, to meet specific Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements of different industrial applications, the IEEE 802.15.4e amendment was released that focuses on improving reliability, robustness and latency. In this paper, we carry out a performance-to-cost analysis of Deterministic and Synchronous Multi-channel Extension (DSME) and Time-slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) MAC modes of IEEE 802.15.4e with 802.15.4 MAC protocol to analyze the trade-off of choosing a particular MAC mode over others. The parameters considered for performance are throughput and latency, and the cost is quantified in terms of energy. A Markov model has been developed for TSCH MAC mode to compare its energy costs with 802.15.4 MAC. Finally, we present the applicability of different MAC modes to different application scenarios.This work was supported in part by the SERB, DST, Government of India under Grant ECRA/2016/001651.Choudhury, N.; Matam, R.; Mukherjee, M.; Lloret, J. (2020). A Performance-to-Cost Analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC With 802.15.4e MAC Modes. IEEE Access. 8:41936-41950. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2976654S4193641950

Enhancement of the Contention Access Period for Reducing Energy Consumption of Industrial Internet of Things Based on IPv6

Abstract: Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is an emerging technology in recent years, which is widely utilized for control, manage the manufacturing environment, and monitor production lines in the smart factories. The IPv6 has enabled the use of many IIoT devices, so these devices consume large amounts of energy. Many research efforts were made in this area aimed to improve power consumption and performance. This paper proposed the Contention Access Period Reduction Medium Access Control protocol (CAP Reduction MAC protocol) for reducing the CAP duration size based on IEEE 802.15.4e. The proposed MAC protocol leads to reduce the CAP portion. Thus the number of time slots, which assigned to the sensors will decrease. Moreover, this paper intends to estimate the performance of IIoT devices in terms of energy consumption, throughput, and delay time through an analysis of their respective ways of operation running the Contiki Operating System (OS). To validate the proposed protocol, different experiments are conducted based on the Cooja simulator. The proposed protocol can be reduced the overall energy consumption with up to 64.14 %, decreases the delay by 33.7 %, and increases throughput by 63.0 %

IEEE Access Special Section Editorial: Green Communications on Wireless Networks

Green communications, focusing on energy efficiency, is a hot topic in both academic and industry communities since they can significantly improve sustainability concerning power resources and environmental conditions. Later, with much focus on this area, several green communication methods started enrolling into a more thoughtful phase, with compelling applications in several networks. For instance, a simple and effective green communication solution is to arrange a sleep mode device incorporated by several MAC protocols with broad wireless network applications. However, it is required to examine the trade-off between green communications' energy efficiency and network requirements. In addition, it is crucial to appraise the performance concerning the energy consumption, the throughput, and the response time, regarding green communications under different wireless network conditions (e.g., different traffic and different channels)

A Beacon and GTS Scheduling Scheme for IEEE 802.15.4 DSME Networks

[EN] The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is one of the widely adopted networking specification for realizing different applications of Internet of Things (IoT). It defines several physical layer options and medium access control (MAC) sublayer protocols for low-power devices supporting low-data rates. One such MAC protocol is the deterministic and synchronous multichannel extension (DSME), which addresses the limitation on the maximum number of guaranteed time slots (GTSs) in 802.15.4-2011 MAC, and provides channel diversity to increase network robustness. However, beacon scheduling in peer-to-peer networks suffers from beacon slot collisions when two or more coordinators simultaneously compete for the same vacant beacon slot. In addition, the standard does not explore DSME-GTS scheduling (DGS) across multiple channels. This article addresses the beacon slot collision problem by proposing a nonconflicting beacon scheduling mechanism using association order (AO). Furthermore, a distributed multichannel DSME-GTS schedule is proposed that optimally assigns DSME-GTSs across different channels. The objective is to minimize the number of times-lots used while maximizing the usage of available channels. Through simulations, the proposed mechanisms' performance is analyzed in terms of energy efficiency, transmission overhead, scheduling efficiency, throughput, and latency and is shown to outperform the other existing schemes.Choudhury, N.; Matam, R.; Mukherjee, M.; Lloret, J. (2022). A Beacon and GTS Scheduling Scheme for IEEE 802.15.4 DSME Networks. IEEE Internet of Things. 9(7):5162-5172. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2021.3110866516251729