A scalable approach for periodic traffic scheduling in IEEE 802.15.4-DSME networks

The IEEE 802.15.4 standard contains the specifications of protocols that are suitable for industrial applications. Each of them is tailored for a specific industrial domain. One of these protocols is the Deterministic and Synchronous Multichannel Extension (DSME), which targets general industrial and commercial application domains. The DSME protocol extends the classic IEEE 802.15.4 protocol, overcoming the limitation on the maximum number of Guaranteed Time Slots (GTSs) and providing for channel diversity to increase network robustness. However, the DSME protocol suffers from scalability problems due to the rigid structure of the DSME multi-superframe, which in large networks does not allow to handle GTSs in an efficient way. To overcome this limitation, this work proposes the Shared DSME, an approach to handle the GTSs within the multi-superframe in an efficient way, thus increasing the scalability of the DSME protocol.