Wireless Sensor Networks and TSCH: a compromise between Reliability, Power Consumption and Latency

Reliability, power consumption, and latency are the three main performance indicators of wireless sensor networks. Time slotted channel hopping (TSCH) is a promising technique introduced in the IEEE 802.15.4 standard that performs some steps ahead in the direction of the final dream to meet all the previous requirements at the same time. In this article, a simple and effective mathematical model is presented for TSCH that, starting from measurements performed on a real testbed, permits to characterize both the network and the surrounding environment. To better characterize power consumption, an experimental measurement campaign was purposely performed on OpenMote B devices. The model, which was checked against a real 6TiSCH implementation, can be employed to predict network behaviour when configuration parameters are varied, in such a way to satisfy different application contexts. Results show that, when one of the three above indices is privileged, unavoidably there is a worsening of the others.