Worst-case bound analysis for the time-critical MAC behaviors of IEEE 802.15.4e

With an advancement towards the paradigm of Internet of Things (IoT), in which every device will be interconnected and communicating with each other, the field of wireless sensor networks has helped to resolve an ever-growing demand in meeting deadlines and reducing power consumption. Among several standards that provide support for IoT, the recently published IEEE 802.15.4e protocol is specifically designed to meet the QoS requirements of industrial applications. IEEE 802.15.4e provides five Medium-Access Control (MAC) behaviors, including three that target time-critical applications: Deterministic and Synchronous Multichannel Extension (DSME); Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) and Low Latency Deterministic Network (LLDN). However, the standard and the literature do not provide any worst-case bound analysis of these behaviors, thus it is not possible to effectively predict their timing performance in an application and accurately devise a network in accordance to such constraints. This paper fills this gap by contributing network models for the three time-critical MAC behaviors using Network Calculus. These models allow deriving the worst-case performance of the MAC behaviors in terms of delay and buffering requirements. We then complement these results by carrying out a thorough performance analysis of these MAC behaviors by observing the impact of different parameters.