Impact of network monitoring in IEEE 802.15.4e-based wireless sensor networks

In the course of increasing the production flexibility and dynamics, the replacement of wired industrial monitoring and control systems by wireless solutions is ongoing. To offer a similar degree of reliability as wired solutions, the IEEE 802.15.4e, targeting factory automation, defines the Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) mechanism. It appears promising to reach a timely, reliable and energy efficient communication. In particular, the TSCH link allocation mechanism, which cares for transmission scheduling in time and frequency, plays a crucial role. In this paper we model and analyze a network monitoring solution for TSCH-based wireless sensor networks, which supplies the link scheduling algorithm with the necessary information about network health status. For distributing the information, we investigate the piggybacking principle and define a new information container for monitoring purposes in the MAC frame. We show the results of our preliminary evaluation for a centralized and a distributed approach in cluster-tree networks in terms of control plane overhead.