Adaptive and Beacon-based multi-channel protocol for Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper proposes a novel protocol for Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSN), which is called Adaptive and Beacon-based Multi-Channel Protocol (ABMP), and combines multi-channel communication, real-time link quality estimation, and dynamic channel allocation, to deal with the problems that affect the link quality in industrial environments. A hybrid channel diversity mechanism is employed, in which the beacon frames are transmitted using channel hopping, and the unicast data packets are transmitted using channel adaptation. The network dynamically allocates the channels to deal with temporal and spatial variations in the channel quality. Referring to ABMP, the end-nodes do not need to receive all the beacons to maintain the communication. As demonstrated in this paper, the proposed approach makes the network more robust against problems related to the beacon reception. The ABMP has been compared to the protocols TSCH, and CSMA/CA for networks with the star and the tree topologies, using theoretical and simulation studies, with a realistic channel model for the IWSN. The results indicate that the proposed protocol presents a better performance in comparison to the MAC protocols defined by the new standards for IWSN, in terms of packet delivery rate, delay, and determinism.