Impact of Slotframe Length on Performance of TSCH-Based Wireless Powered Sensor Networks

Recently, the IEEE 802.15.4 time-slotted channel hopping (TSCH) has been considered one of the emerging medium access control (MAC) protocols for the low-power and highly reliable wireless powered sensor networks (WPSNs). In TSCH-based WPSN, the period of data transmission and energy harvesting is determined depending on the slotframe length. Thus, the slotframe length may largely affect the performance of TSCH-based WPSN, especially when the network environment varies. Accordingly, in the TSCH-based WPSN design, it is considered an important issue to determine an appropriate slotframe length in consideration of the network environment. In this paper, we investigate the impact of slotframe length on the performance of TSCH-based WPSNs through experimental simulation. Specifically, we observe the variation of the total amount of harvested energy, aggregate throughput, and average end-to-end delay when the network size and traffic load change and discuss the appropriate slotframe length for different network environments.