Control and data traffic isolation in SDWSN using IEEE 802.15.4e TSCH

Since it facilitates the network management and improves the flexibility, Software Defined Wireless Sensor Network (SDWSN) is considered an important development in the field of the Internet of Things (IoT). However, control and data messages share the same wireless media and compete for the constrained resources of SDWSN, leading to performance degradation. In this context, an isolation between control and data messages could be useful to reduce this competition. Adopting IT-SDN, an SDWSN framework, on top of IEEE 802.15.4e Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH), this work presents an approach to completely isolate control and data messages using the time-slots. The evaluation is carried out through simulations, where several application scenarios are considered. Results showed that although the consumed energy increased, the proposed isolation approach led to higher delivery rate and lower delay in the application layer.