6tiSCH wireless industrial networks: Determinism meets IPv6

Abstract

In the last 40 years we have witnessed the emergence of the Operational Technology (OT) and the Information Technology (IT) in parallel, each established with its own scope and range of applications; then, the progressive convergence of IT over an IP infrastructure, imprinted by the birth of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Nowadays, we are witnessing the unstoppable evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT), and the upcoming integration of OT and IT. The technologies facilitating such OT/IT convergence only recently commenced to take shape. In detail, existing industrial Wireless Sensor Network technologies have demonstrated that the IEEE802.15.4e Timeslotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) effectively enables industrial-grade deterministic properties for control loops with low latency, ultra-low jitter, ultra-low power consumption and a high reliability. This chapter introduces the work recently started at the IETF by the 6TiSCH working group, and which aims at enabling IPv6 over the TSCH mode of the IEEE802.15.4e standard. In particular 6TiSCH standardizes different mechanisms for allocating link-layer resources and trade off latency and bandwidth with power consumption. Several approaches are supported, based on a combination of centralized and distributed techniques.