Mobility-Focused Joining in TSCH Networks

TSCH is a MAC protocol able to provide reliable wireless communication to IoT networks. For applications where mobility is necessary research has shown that TSCH presents a suboptimal performance. One of the main issues is that the time required for a device to join a TSCH network is unpredictable and theoretically has no upper limit. The joining process to a TSCH network can take several minutes in some cases which can ensue significant delay and power overheads. In this paper we examine how TSCH can be adapted to support mobile applications, by improving the joining and re-joining procedure. Relevant information about the network topology is aggregated throughout the network to be utilized during the joining process. The results show that the joining time can be reduced by 50% and the re-joining time by 90%.