Channel Condition Based Dynamic Beacon Interval for Faster Formation of 6TiSCH Network

Industrial applications of Internet of Things (IoT) demand high reliability, deterministic latency, and high scalability with energy efficiency to the communication and networking protocols. 6TiSCH is a time slotted channel hopping (TSCH) medium access control (MAC) protocol running under the IPv6 enabled higher layer protocols for industrial IoT (IIoT). In this paper, we theoretically analyze the network formation protocol in 6TiSCH network. Analysis reveals that the performance of the 6TiSCH network degrades when a pledge (new node) joins as it increases channel congestion by allowing to transmit beacon message. On the other hand, beacon transmission is essential to expand or reorganize the present network topology. To overcome this performance tradeoff, a channel condition based dynamic beacon interval (C2DBI) scheme is proposed in which beacon transmission interval varies with channel congestion status during network formation. Channel congestion status is estimated by each joined node in distributed manner, and subsequently changes its beacon generation interval to best fit with present condition. Finally the performance of C2DBI is compared with the minimal configuration standard and few other benchmark protocols. Analytical, simulation and real testbed results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the state of the art protocols in terms of joining time and energy consumption during network formation.

Automated summary

This paper analyzes the network formation protocol in 6TiSCH network and proposes a dynamic beacon interval scheme based on channel condition to overcome the performance tradeoff. The proposed scheme outperforms the state of the art protocols in terms of joining time and energy consumption during network formation.