Assessing the Effectiveness of Channel Hopping in IEEE 802.15.4 TSCH Networks
Gianluca Cena, Stefano Scanzio, Mohammad Ghazi Vakili, Claudio Giovanni Demartini, Adriano Valenzano · IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society · 2023
Time slotted channel hopping is an enhanced access mechanism for IEEE 802.15.4 that improves many aspects of the original protocol, like determinism and power consumption. Besides preventing collisions, time slotting allows motes to stay asleep for most of the time. In addition, channel hopping achieves more stable communication, in terms of packet losses and transmission latency, in spite of wireless spectrum variations. In this paper, the specific effects of the latter mechanism are investigated from both qualitative and quantitative points of view. In particular, a thorough experimental campaign was carried out on real devices, deployed in a real environment and performing realistic data exchanges, when they are exposed to different interference conditions, to assess the benefits it brings over the case when transmissions are performed on a fixed channel. Experimental results confirm that, when the transmission frequency is kept repeatedly changing, communication quality is sensibly less affected by co-located Wi-Fi infrastructures, which makes the network behavior more predictable and hence intrinsically more dependable