Collision prevention in distributed 6TiSCH networks

The IEEE802.15.4e standard for low power wireless sensor networks defines a new mode called Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) as Medium Access Control (MAC). TSCH allows highly efficient deterministic time-frequency schedules that are built and maintained by the 6TiSCH operation sublayer (6top). In this paper, we propose a solution to limit the allocation of identical cells to co-located pair of nodes by distributed TSCH scheduling algorithms. It consists of making nodes able to overhear past cell negotiations exchanged in shared cells by their neighbors and prevent the nodes from reusing already assigned cells in future allocations. Our mechanism has been tested through simulations that show a significant improvement with respect to random scheduling algorithms.