Faster Joining in 6TiSCH Network using Dynamic Beacon Interval

Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial environment (aka IIoT) is playing a crucial role in reshaping the current industry. IPv6 network on the top of Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) MAC protocol, commonly known as 6TiSCH, is one of the emerging protocol for IIoT. Industrial use of IoT demands high reliability, deterministic latency and high scalability with energy efficiency. In this paper, initial network formation procedure in a 6TiSCH network is assessed analytically. Analysis reveals that the performance of a 6TiSCH network degrades when a new node joins the network. To overcome this performance degradation, we propose a dynamic beacon interval scheme in which the interval varies with the number of joined nodes during network formation. We compare the performance of the proposed scheme with the minimal configuration standard in which static beacon interval is used. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme offers better performance in terms of joining time during network bootstrap.