A performance analysis of Orchestra scheduling for time-slotted channel hopping networks

Abstract

The IEEE 802.15.4 TSCH (Time Slotted Channel Hopping) represents the latest generation of low-power and highly reliable medium-access control (MAC) protocols. It orchestrates the medium access according to a time-frequency communication schedule. However, TSCH specification does not provide any practical solution for the establishment of the schedule. Orchestra is a recent scheduling solution for TSCH that brings significant advantages such as, the use of simple scheduling rules, the low signaling overhead, and the high delivery ratio it is able to fulfill. In this paper, we investigate the use of TSCH protocol with Orchestra scheduling approach for the Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Performance analysis results demonstrate that despite its unique features, Orchestra may incur high end-to-end communication delay, especially when the traffic is not uniformly distributed in the network. This limitation makes Orchestra not sufficiently convenient for several delay-sensitive IoT applications, such as smart grid applications.