Integration of Steerable Smart Antennas to IETF 6TiSCH Protocol for High Reliability Wireless IoT Networks

Abstract

Steerable directional antennas are increasingly utilised to improve the overall performance of the traditional wireless sensor networks. Steerable directional antenna based networking solutions increase the network capacity by providing a longer range of transmission and reduced interference as compared to networking solutions with omni-directional antennas. However, the use of smart antennas requires complex algorithms and such algorithms may not be easily leveraged in low power Internet of Things (IoT) networks. This study presents mechanisms for integrating low complexity smart antenna solutions into IETF 6TiSCH protocol with the aim of creating scalable and reliable industrial IoT networks. The solution defines extensions to MAC layer and scheduling mechanisms of IETF 6TiSCH protocol to enable its seamless integration with low complexity steerable smart antennas. The results of this study show that smart antenna enabled 6TiSCH protocol stack outperforms the legacy 6TiSCH stack in terms of data delivery performance especially in high density scenarios.