Analysis of low latency TSCH networks for physical event detection

Timeslotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) is a mode of the IEEE802.15.4 standard for low-power wireless sensor networks. We discuss the variation in performance of a 6TÍSCH network implemented using OpenWSN, an open-source implementation of current low-power wireless sensor networking standards, by measuring end-to-end packet latency — the time between an event trigger signaling the transmitter node's microprocessor to create a packet, and the packet reception on the receiving node — with 0.5 millisecond accuracy. In TSCH networks, time is divided into repeated chunks known as slotframes, which are further divided into timeslots. We explore the effect the number of available transmission slots has on packet end-to-end latency for an 11 slot 6TÍSCH network with 1, 3, 5, 8, and 11 active slots. Results are reported for a setup with one transmitter and one receiver.