Performance Assessment of the Minimal 6TiSCH Configuration

Industries will be transformed by the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). For industrial systems, the IETF-established 6TiSCH Working Group is now standardizing a reliable and timely wireless connection and integration into IPv6 communication networks (WG). 6TiSCH (IPv6 over TSCH) uses a minimal configuration which allocates the minimum bandwidth required for network advertising and join traffic. The process of creating 6TiSCH networks is divided into two stages. Each node must join the Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) network to enable single-hop communication with its neighbors, and then join the RPL routing protocol’s logical topology. The TSCH network formation phase uses Enhanced Beacons, and the RPL routing protocol bootstrap phase uses DIO control messages. In this paper, we investigate the performance of the minimal 6TiSCH configuration. Performance analysis results demonstrate that the minimal configuration may result in a long network construction and poor routing algorithm performance because of EBs’ higher priority, trickle algorithm.