Network Formation in IEEE 802.15.4e Time Slotted Channel Hopping: A Survey

Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) is a communication mode of the IEEE 802.15.4e standard introduced as an enhancement to the previous standard (IEEE 802.15.42011) to address the industrial market. This mode is designed specifically for process automation and factory monitoring. It uses time-slotted access and channel hopping mechanism. It also provides low latency and high reliability reducing remarkably the energy consumption. Moreover, the 6TiSCH protocol stack combines TSCH with IPv6 to form a well-tuned and complete networking solution. A key element that significantly affects the adoption of TSCH as a MAC protocol is the performance of the network formation process in terms of joining delay and power consumption. This paper studies the process of network formation both in TSCH and 6TiSCH networks, surveying a significant number of research contributions on the subject, and highlighting the advertisement policies developed by researchers. It also sheds light on some open issues not covered or poorly addressed by the surveyed contributions.