Multiple channel access techniques in industrial IoT: evaluation case of time-slotted channel hopping

The Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) protocol, defined in the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, is tailored to meet the stringent communication requirements of industrial applications. TSCH combines Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) to efficiently allocate resources and schedule communications in IoT networks. In this paper, we conduct a comparative performance assessment of TSCH-based schedulers under varying traffic loads and patterns using the COOJA emulator. Our study focuses on two schedulers for TSCH: Minimal Scheduling and Orchestra, which includes two key variants - Orchestra Sender Based Shared (O-SBS) and Orchestra Receiver Based Shared (O-RBS). To comprehensively assess their performance in IoT networks, we conduct an in-depth evaluation across multiple key parameters: Packet Delivery and Acknowledgment Ratios, Radio-On duty cycle, End-to-End Latency, Stability, and Embedded Firmware's Memory footprint. Our results indicate that Orchestra SBS excels in ensuring high reliability and low latency in high-traffic scenarios. Meanwhile, TSCH Minimal Scheduling exhibits superior energy efficiency, and it boasts a smaller embedded firmware memory footprint.