Active Connectivity Fundamentals for TSCH Networks of Mobile Robots

TL;DR

This paper introduces active connectivity for TSCH networks in mobile robots, enabling dynamic regulation of node movement to maintain network connectivity, supported by modeling and simulation analysis.

Contribution

It proposes a novel active connectivity mechanism for TSCH in mobile scenarios, addressing the limitations of static topology assumptions.

Findings

Active connectivity improves network reliability in mobile scenarios.

Trade-offs between connectivity and application performance are quantified.

Simulation results validate the approach's effectiveness.

Abstract

Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) is a medium access protocol defined in the IEEE 802.15.4 standard which have been proven to be one of the most reliable options when it comes to industrial applications. TSCH has been designed to be utilized in static network topologies. Thus, if an application scenario requires a mobile network topology, TSCH does not perform reliably. In this paper we introduce active connectivity for mobile application scenarios, such as mobile robots. This is a feature that enables the option to regulate physical characteristics such as the speed of a node as it moves, in order to keep being connected to the TSCH network. We model the active connectivity approach through a basic example where two nodes are moving towards the same direction to infer the main principles of the introduced approach. We evaluate the active connectivity feature through simulations and quantify trade-off between connectivity and application-layer performance.