A Platform for Evaluating Clustering Strategies in Mobile IEEE 802.15.4-TSCH networks

One of the main features of future factories envisaged by Industry 4.0 is the integration of humans, machinery and sensors, which will be able to exchange information, trigger actions and collaborate while on the move. The management of Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) including mobile nodes is a challenging target, as mobility support has a significant impact on the network complexity and management.Recently, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has been proposed as a paradigm for controlling IWSN, with the purpose of providing a smart management of mobile nodes in industrial scenarios. However, resource management, that is, slot and frequency assignment, needs ad hoc clustering strategies to avoid the waste of resources that would impair IWSN scalability. Network scalability is a crucial requisite for the successful development of both IWSN and the Industry 4.0 vision as a whole. For this reason, clustering policies are today a cutting-edge research topic.This paper exploits the SDN approach to manage IWSN and proposes a platform for the evaluation of clustering strategies which can be profitably applied to scalable IWSN that support mobility.