Collision-Free Advertisement Scheduling for IEEE 802.15.4-TSCH Networks

Abstract

IEEE802.15.4-time slotted channel hopping (TSCH) is a medium access control (MAC) protocol designed to support wireless device networking, offering high reliability and low power consumption, two features that are desirable in the industrial internet of things (IIoT). The formation of an IEEE802.15.4-TSCH network relies on the periodic transmissions of network advertising frames called enhanced beacons (EB). The scheduling of EB transmissions plays a crucial role both in the joining time and in the power consumption of the nodes. The existence of collisions between EB is an important factor that negatively affects the performance. In the worst case, all the neighboring EB transmissions of a node may collide, a phenomenon which we call a full collision. Most of the EB scheduling methods that have been proposed in the literature are fully or partially based on randomness in order to create the EB transmission schedule. In this paper, we initially show that the randomness can lead to a considerable probability of collisions, and, especially, of full collisions. Subsequently, we propose a novel autonomous EB scheduling method that eliminates collisions using a simple technique that does not increase the power consumption. To the best of our knowledge, our proposed method is the first non-centralized EB scheduling method that fully eliminates collisions, and this is guaranteed even if there are mobile nodes. To evaluate our method, we compare our proposal with recent and state-of-the-art non-centralized network-advertisement scheduling methods. Our evaluation does not consider only fixed topology networks, but also networks with mobile nodes, a scenario which has not been examined before. The results of our simulations demonstrate the superiority of our method in terms of joining time and energy consumption.

Fast Synchronization Scheme Using 2-Way Parallel Rendezvous in IEEE 802.15.4 TSCH

“…Before and after synchronization, nodes regularly estimate channel quality, resulting in additional energy consumption. [20] points out that the random-based EB scheduling method still bears the possibility of collision and proposes the collision-free advertisement scheduling (CFAS). Unlike other decentralized approaches, this method removes the collision.…”

An Empirical Survey of Autonomous Scheduling Methods for TSCH

“…However, some of the surveyed works have been designed to optimize the performance for a single purpose, such as low latency [16], or for a specific target application [17]. Furthermore, autonomous scheduling can be a building block for more complex scheduling protocols [7], including for network construction and maintenance [21].…”

“…The scope of collision-free advertisement scheduling [21] is more limited: this work specifically investigates the scheduling of Enhanced Beacon (EB) packets. The paper proposes a novel EB scheduling method and claims that it completely eliminates EB collisions.…”

Towards Improving TSCH Energy Efficiency: An Analytical Approach to a Practical Implementation

“…Later, the same authors present in [ 14 ] a scheme that dynamically modifies the transmission period of the Enhanced Beacons, which can be properly adapted to reduce the power consumption and improve connection time and connection success rate. In [ 15 ], the existence of collisions between EBs is taken into account, and a novel autonomous EB scheduling method that eliminates collisions is proposed.…”