Performance Analysis of the Slot Allocation Handshake in IEEE 802.15.4 DSME

Abstract

Wireless mesh networks using IEEE 802.15.4 are getting increasingly popular for industrial applications because of low energy consumption and low maintenance costs. The IEEE 802.15.4 standard introduces DSME (Deterministic and Synchronous Multi-channel Extension). DSME uses time-slotted channel access to guarantee timely data delivery, multi-channel communication, and frequency hopping to mitigate the effects of external interferences. A distinguishing feature of DSME is its flexibility and adaptability to time-varying network traffic and to changes in the network topology. In this paper we evaluate the ability of DSME to adapt to time-varying network traffic. We examine the limits for slot allocation rates for different topologies. The evaluation is performed with openDSME, an open-source implementation of DSME.