Experimental Validation of a Distributed Self-Configured 6TiSCH with Traffic Isolation in Low Power Lossy Networks

Abstract

Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) is among the proposed Medium Access Control (MAC) layer protocols of the IEEE 802.15.4-2015 standard for low-power wireless communications in Internet of Things (IoT). TSCH aims to guarantee high network reliability by exploiting channel hopping and keeping the nodes time-synchronized at the MAC layer. In this paper, we focus on the traffic isolation issue, where several clients and applications may cohabit under the same wireless infrastructure without impacting each other. To this end, we present an autonomous version of 6TiSCH where each device uses only local information to select their timeslots. Moreover, we exploit 6TiSCH tracks to guarantee flow isolation, defining the concept of shared (best-effort) and dedicated (isolated) tracks. Our thorough experimental performance evaluation campaign, conducted over the open and large scale FIT IoT-LAB testbed (by employing the OpenWSN), highlight the interest of this solution to provide reliability and low delay while not relying on any centralized component.