Contention-Based Proportional Fairness (CBPF) Transmission Scheme for Time Slotted Channel Hopping Networks

Time slotted channel hopping (TSCH) is a mediumaccess control (MAC) protocol introduced in IEEE802.15.4e standard, addressing low-power requirements of the Internet of Things and low-power and lossy networks. The 6TiSCH operation (6top) sublayer of IEEE802.15.4e defines the schedule that includes sleep, transmit, and receive routines of the nodes. However, the standard does not specify the design of the schedule. In this article, we propose a contention-based proportional fairness transmission scheme for TSCH networks to maximize the system throughput addressing the fair allocation of resources to the nodes. We propose a convex programming-based method to achieve the fairness and throughput objectives. We model TSCH MAC as a multichannel slotted ALOHA and analyze it for a schedule given by the 6top layer. Performance metrics, such as throughput, delay, and energy spent per successful transmission, are derived and validated through simulations and real-time testbed implementations.