Concurrent Wireless Cut-Through Forwarding: Ultra-Low Latency Multi-Hop Communication for the Internet of Things

Achieving low latency remains a challenge in today’s industrial Internet of Things (IoT) applications, particularly if operated over wireless multi-hop networks. One idea that can distinctly reduce the multi-hop latency is the so-called cut-through forwarding, i.e., a node starts relaying a packet after it has only received a fraction of it by leveraging two radios. This paper proposes the novel concurrent wireless cut-through (CWCT) protocol based on a prototype design which combines two off-the- shelf IoT devices. To improve reliability and eliminate routing overhead, CWCT applies concurrent transmission and Golay error correction coding. Evaluation on a controlled topology and on a medium-size testbed shows the large reduction in latency of CWCT compared to Glossy and the high synchronicity of concurrent transmission. To further improve packet reliability, we need to reduce the out-of-band leakage.