A centralized scheduling algorithm for IEEE 802.15.4e TSCH based industrial low power wireless networks

Time-Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) is a part of an emerging IEEE 802.15.4e standard to enable deterministic low-power mesh networking. It promises to pave the way to the future Internet of (Important) things by offering high reliability and low latency for wireless industrial applications. Nonetheless, the standard only provides a framework but it does not mandate a specific scheduling mechanism. In this paper, we propose a centralized Adaptive MUlti-hop Scheduling method (AMUS) based on the latest TSCH MAC. AMUS first enables sequential multi-hop scheduling to provide low latency guarantee for time-critical applications. Secondly, the novel tentative cell allocation method allocates additional resources to vulnerable links such that possible MAC retransmissions can be accommodated within the same slotframe, hence significantly reducing the delay caused by interference or collisions. Last but not least, the battery power of the node can be further conserved by adopting the proposed End-of-Q notification mechanism. Preliminary simulation results have confirmed that AMUS outperforms other popular scheduling algorithms in the literature.