ATP: A Fast Joining Technique for IEEE802.15. 4-TSCH Networks

IEEE802.15.4-TSCH (Time-Slotted Channel Hopping) is an emerging MAC protocol for low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPANs). It combines time-division multiple access with channel-hopping to provide high reliability and ultralow power consumption. The formation of an IEEE802.15.4-TSCH network relies on the periodic transmission of Enhanced Beacons (EBs). The transmission frequency of the EBs affects the joining time of nodes. An increase of this frequency reduces their joining time. In this paper, we present an Advertisement Timeslot Partitioning technique (ATP) which can be used to increase the EB rate without the need of allocating more timeslots. The key idea behind ATP is that it compacts multiple EBs in a single timeslot while it uses a different channel for each EB. Since a joining node listens to a random channel, increasing the number of frequencies per timeslot, we increase the probability of receiving an EB. Our evaluation shows that ATP improves the average joining time by up to 65 % in the tested scenarios.