Session: IEEE 802.15.
4 TSCH MSWiM’18, October 28-November 2, 2018, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Collision-Free Broadcast Methods for IEEE 802.15.4-TSCH
Networks Formation
Apostolos Karalis Dimitrios Zorbas
Department of Informatics Department of Informatics
University of Piraeus University of Piraeus
Piraeus, Greece Piraeus, Greece
akaralis@unipi.gr dzorbas@unipi.gr
ABSTRACT
One of the most recent and reliable MAC protocols for low-rate
wireless personal area networks is the IEEE802.15.4-TSCH. The
formation of an IEEE802.15.4-TSCH network depends on the peri-
odic transmission of Enhanced Beacons (EBs), and, by extension,
on the scheduling of EB transmissions. In this paper, we present
and analyze a negative phenomenon that can occur in most of
the autonomous EB scheduling methods proposed in the literature.
This phenomenon, which we call full collision, takes place when
all the neighboring EB transmissions of a joining node collide. As
a consequence, a node may not be able to join the network fast,
consuming a considerable amount of energy as well. In order to
eliminate collisions during EB transmissions, and, thus, to avoid the
occurrence of this phenomenon, we propose a novel autonomous
collision-free EB scheduling policy. The results of our simulations
demonstrate the superiority of our policy compared to two other
recently proposed policies.
CCS CONCEPTS
• Networks → Sensor networks; Mobile ad hoc networks;
KEYWORDS
IEEE802.15.4-TSCH; Broadcast; Network formation
ACM Reference Format:
Apostolos Karalis, Dimitrios Zorbas, and Christos Douligeris. 2018. Collision-
Free Broadcast Methods for IEEE 802.15.4-TSCH Networks Formation. In
21st ACM International Conference on Modelling, Analysis and Simulation
of Wireless and Mobile Systems (MSWIM ‘18), October 28-November 2, 2018,
Montreal, QC, Canada. ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 4, 8 pages. https:
//doi.org/10.1145/3242102.3242108
1 INTRODUCTION
The IEEE802.15.4-TSCH standard [4] has been proposed as a MAC
layer communication protocol for Industrial Internet of Things
applications [10]. It achieves high reliability and very low delay
combined with ultra-low power consumption, which are desirable
features for industrial applications. TSCH (Time Slotted Channel
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https://doi.org/10.1145/3242102.3242108
91
Christos Douligeris
Department of Informatics
University of Piraeus
Piraeus, Greece
cdoulig@unipi.gr
Hopping) uses a channel access method that combines time slot-
ted communications and frequency hopping spread spectrum to
mitigate potential external interference. TSCH, also, requires the
presence of a time synchronization protocol so that a pair of nodes
(sender-receiver) wakes up simultaneously and communicates with-
out errors.
The formation of an IEEE802.15.4-TSCH network relies on the
usage of Enhanced Beacons. EBs are MAC frames that are periodi-
cally sent by nodes which have already joined the network in order
to advertise it. A node desiring to join the network must receive an
EB. For this purpose, it must turn its radio on and scan the available
channels for an EB, which can be sent on a pre-defined static chan-
nel. However, this could cause network disconnections when, for
instance, this channel is blocked in case of interference. Because of
the use of multiple channels and of the channel-hopping mecha-
nism, finding an EB may require a considerable amount of time [3].
Morever, the longer the time it takes the node to receive an EB, the
higher the energy it consumes. The tuning of the transmission rate
of EBs allows a trade-off between the joining time and the energy
consumption [11]. Moreover, the increase of the EB transmission
rate typically requires the allocation of more cells, thus reducing
the number of cells available for data transmission or reception.
Finally, collisions between EBs transmitted by different nodes at
the same timeslot may occur. In the worst case, all the neighboring
EB transmissions of a joining node collide, a phenomenon which
we call full collision. These collisions lead to longer joining times
and increased power consumption.
In this paper, we attempt to tackle or mitigate the above-mentioned
issues by proposing the “Collision Free Advertisement Scheduling”
(CFAS). CFAS is an autonomous collision-free scheduling method
where every node transmits an EB based on its own identifier. To
the best of our knowledge, CFAS is the first proposed autonomous
EB scheduling method providing collision-free EB transmissions. In
order to improve the EB transmission rates without compromising
the number of cells dedicated to data transmissions, we examine the
integration of the “Advertisement Timeslot Partitioning” (ATP) [5]
into CFAS. ATP is a method that allows the sending of more than
one EB per channel within a slot in order to increase the probabil-
ity of receiving an EB. Consequently, the two major contributions
of this paper are (a) the first proposed autonomous collision-free
broadcasting algorithm for fast network formation, and (b) its ATP
enhancement that decreases the required number of advertisement
slots (i.e. slots used for EBs) by allowing the sending of multiple
EBs per channel within a slot. Our simulations demonstrate the
capability of CFAS to decrease the average node joining time, with
an almost negligible increase in the number of advertisement slots.
Session: IEEE 802.15.4 TSCH
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. In Section
2 we give some insights on the TSCH scheduling operation. In
Section 3 we briefly review related works and describe their weak-
nesses. We focus on the full EB collision problem and we provide
an analysis of the likelihood that happens. In Section 4 we propose
the CFAS method and its potential to be combined with the ATP
mechanism for performance enhancements. Section 5 evaluates
the proposed solutions and compares them against existing works.
Finally, Section 6 concludes this paper and presents ideas for future
improvements.
2 SCHEDULING IN AN IEEE 802.15.4-TSCH
NETWORK
Data transmissions in TSCH are based on a deterministic schedule
consisting of a matrix of cells. The purpose of the cells is to define
when a packet has to be transmitted and over which physical fre-
quency. The cells are mainly used for data transmissions (dedicated
cells), but some of them are reserved for advertisement purposes.
These cells are shared between all the nodes in the network even
though this approach causes collisions. By increasing the number
of shared cells we can reduce the joining time of a new node to the
network at the cost of a higher duty cycle.
Since time is divided in slotframes of equal length, the schedule
repeats cyclically. An example with 5 nodes and the corresponding
schedule with 2 advertisement cells and 6 dedicated cells is depicted
in Fig. 1. The cells are characterized by the timeslot identifier and
the (unique) channel offset assigned to each pair of nodes by the
scheduler. Each pair of nodes can generate a physical radio channel
using the Absolute Slot Number (ASN ) which is initiated from
the PAN (Personal Area Network) coordinator (i.e., node R in the
example), the channel offset, and the number of available radio
channels C. The mapping function of Eq. (1) is exploited as it is
defined by the standard. Successive transmissions are performed
on a different physical channel since ASN increases over time.
RadioChannel = map[(ASN + ChannelO f f set) % C ] (1)
3 MOTIVATION
3.1 Related research
EB scheduling is a very important function for the formation of
IEEE 802.15.4-TSCH networks. However, the standard [4] does not
define any EB scheduling policy, but assumes that the EB rate is
configured by a higher layer as appropriate to the density of the
devices, the desired time for network formation, and the energy
devoted to network formation. As a result, various methods have
been proposed in the literature so far.
Duy and Kim [1] propose an approach called RAPID, which
uses fuzzy logic to dynamically adjust the EB rate in a way that
minimizes the power consumption of both the joining nodes and the
advertisers (i.e. already joined nodes transmitting EBs). However,
their approach assumes that all the advertisers are visible to each
other and they are visible to every node desiring to join to the
network.
Kim et al. [7] propose a scheme, named FJCQ, to accelerate the
joining time of a network in the presence of external interference.
In this scheme, the advertisers periodically listen to the available
92
MSWiM’18, October 28-November 2, 2018, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Routing links
Radio link
A
C R
B
D Dedicated
Shared cells
cells
Channel 1 C-B
offsets 0 A-R B-R B-R D-B B-R
0 5
Timeslots
Figure 1: A 5-node topology with a simple TSCH schedule us-
ing dedicated cells for unicast data transmissions and shared
cells for Enhanced Beacons.
channels and rank them according to their quality. Then, they select
the top channels in the list to advertise EBs. Similarly, the joining
nodes select only the best channels to receive an EB. Although, their
mechanism seems to achieve a low average joining time in high
interference environments, it requires additional power consump-
tion by both the advertisers and the joining nodes. This problem
has not been evaluated.
De Guglielmo et al. [2] formulate an optimization problem to
minimize the joining time of nodes. They present a Model-based
Beacon Scheduling (MBS) algorithm allowing a derivation of an
EB schedule that approximates the optimal one. Their solution,
which is prone to collisions, assumes that the optimal EB schedule
is calculated by the PAN coordinator and propagated to other nodes
via EBs.
Khoufi et al. [6] propose a new deterministic beacon advertise-
ment algorithm to ensure that EBs are transmitted on all the avail-
able frequencies and without collision. According to this algorithm,
each node receives a unique advertisement cell that is calculated
during the association procedure.
Vucinic et al. [9] propose the use of a Bayesian broadcast algo-
rithm to optimize the network formation process in 6TiSCH net-
works (TSCH over IPv6). However, this approach focuses only on
the optimization of the broadcast transmissions in a single (shared)
cell as it is recommended by the minimal 6TiSCH configuration
[11].
Finally, Vogli et al. [8] present four new mechanisms, named
RV (Random Vertical filling), RH (Random Horizontal filling), ECV
(Enhanced Coordinated Vertical filling), and ECH (Enhanced Co-
ordinated Horizontal filling), to speed up the joining process of
the nodes. The EB scheduling is performed over a multi-slotframe
structure, where each slotframe has one advertisement slot. In RV
and RH the EB schedule is created randomly, while in ECV and
ECH the nodes sense the advertisement cells to find a free one, and,
thus, to avoid collisions. The difference between RV and RH, as
well as between ECV and ECH, is the way that advertisement cells
are filled in the slotframe. Time-vertical and horizontal approaches
Session: IEEE 802.15.4 TSCH MSWiM’18, October 28-November 2, 2018, Montréal, Québec, Canada

 4
(4) C!
are proposed. The performance of the approaches is evaluated both collide in two groups is 22 · (C−2)! · C1 and hence, the full collision
analytically and experimentally. We must note, however, that none  4  4
(4)
of these approaches solves the problem of EB collisions. probability is C · C1 + 22 · (C−2)! C! · 1 .
C
In the case where N is 5, full collision appears when either all the
nodes collide in the same cell or there are two collision groups, one
3.2 Problem statement with 3 nodes and one with 2 nodes. Since there are 53 combinations

The autonomous methods that have been proposed can be sepa- of collision groups and (C−2)! C! different cell selections for each of

rated into two categories: (a) in those which advertisers consume them, the probability of collision in groups is 53 · (C−2)!

C! · ( 1 )5 .
C
as much energy as it is required for the transmission of the EBs,  5
C!  1  5
and (b) in those where there is an extra energy consumption. The Therefore, the full collision probability is C · C1 + 53 · (C−2)! · C .
first category consists of RV, RH, and RAPID, while the second of For N equal to 6, the probability of full collision is different when
ECV, ECH, and FJCQ. As it is reasonable, in cases where the energy C < 3 (i.e. C = 2), and when C ≥ 3. When C = 2, the required
consumption of advertisers should be the minimum possible, the probability is the sum of the probability all the nodes to select the
methods of the first category are the most appropriate. However, same cell, the probability of have two collision groups of three
these methods face a major problem. There is considerable probabil- nodes, and the probability of having two collision groups with 4
ity all the neighboring EB transmissions of a joining node to collide; nodes in one them and 2 nodes in the other. Two collision groups
that is, each time a neighbor transmits an EB there is another neigh- (6)
of three nodes can be created with 23 ways that can be combined
bor transmitting in the same channel. In this case, which we call C! different cell selections, and hence the probability of
full collision, the joining node may not be able to receive a valid with (C−2)!
(6) C!
 6
EB, and thus to join the network. It is highlighting that, when RV such groups to occur is 23 · (C−2)! · C1 . Similarly, the appearance
or RH is used, this problem does not occur in star topologies, but
of one collision group with 4 nodes together with a collision group
it may happen in mesh topologies for joining nodes that are not
of 2 nodes can be done with 64 node groupings and for (C−2)! C! cell


neighbors of the PAN coordinator. The root of the problem is that  6
the nodes select randomly the cells where they will transmit EBs. selections, and thus the related probability is 64 · (C−2)!

C! · 1 .
C
In the simplest case of full collision, where the joining node has  6
Therefore, for C=2, the required probability is C · C + 64 · 1

only two joined neighbors, the probability of full collision is 6.25%
if RV or RAPID is used with 16 available channels (i.e. what the  6
(6)
 6
C! · 1 C! · 1
+ 23 · (C−2)! When C > 3, it must also taken
band of 2.4Ghz has), or RH is used with 16 advertisement slots per (C−2)! C C
multi-slotframe. It is worth noting that, in case of RAPID, as the into account the probability of appearing three collision groups
cells selected by nodes correspond to consecutive channels, the of two nodes. For the creation of three collision groups with two
probability of full collision is equal to the full collision probability (6)(4) C! possible cell
nodes in each, there are 23!2 possible ways and (C−3)!
in one advertisement slot (e.g. the first). In the following subsection,
selections for each way, so the probability of such groups to appear
we provide a basic mathematical approach to the calculation of the (6)(4)
 6
is 23!2 · (C−3)!C! · 1 . Therefore, the full collision probability in
full collision probability. C
 6  6
(6)
 6
this case is C · C + 64 · (C−2)!
1 C! · 1 C! · 1
+ 23 · (C−2)! +


C C
 6
3.3 Full-Collision Mathematical Analysis (62)(42) C! 1
3! · (C−3)! · C .
We assume the existence of a network with C available cells for EB With the same logic, the full collision probability can be calcu-
transmissions, and a joining node with N neighboring advertisers. lated for larger N. One should pay attention to take into account
Each node transmits EBs in a randomly selected cell. It is obvious all the possible collision groups. Table 1 presents the full collision
that the probability that a node selects a cell which is independent probability for N from 1 to 10 and with up to 16 radio channels
from the cell selection of other nodes is 1/C. In addition, collisions available. We can observe that the probability is not negligible when
can occur only when N is greater than 1. If C is 1 and N is greater the number of available channels is low even with a high number of
than 1, then full collision always occurs. Next, we study the cases neighbors. A typical scenario of this case is when multiple channels
where N and C are greater than 1. have been blacklisted in the presence of external interference [12].
When N is 2 or 3, full collision occurs only when all the nodes
select the same cell. The probability all the nodes to select a specific 4 COLLISION-FREE BROADCASTING
cell is ( C1 )N . Therefore, the probability all the nodes to collide in To eliminate collisions during EB transmissions, and therefore the
one of the available cells is C · ( C1 )N . full collision phenomenon, we propose a new autonomous method
When N is 4, full collision takes place if either all the nodes use called CFAS (Collision Free Advertisement Scheduling). Compared
the same cell or two of the nodes collide in a cell and the other two with the other autonomous methods proposed in the literature so
in another cell. In the latter case, there are two collision groups far, CFAS is the first that optimize the joining time of nodes through
(4) complete elimination of collisions. In addition, it’s worth noting
which can be created with 22 different ways. For each of these
C! different channel selections that can be made
ways, there are (C−2)! that CFAS guarantees collision-free EB transmissions even if the
nodes are moving. This is achieved through a simple technique that
by the collision groups. Consequently, the probability that nodes
does not increase the power consumption of nodes.

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Session: IEEE 802.15.4 TSCH MSWiM’18, October 28-November 2, 2018, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Table 1: Probability (%) of a full collision with variable number of neighbors N and number of channels C.

C
N
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
2 50.00 33.33 25.00 20.00 16.67 14.29 12.50 11.11 10.00 9.09 8.33 7.69 7.14 6.67 6.25
3 25.00 11.11 6.25 4.00 2.78 2.04 1.56 1.23 1.00 0.83 0.69 0.59 0.51 0.44 0.39
4 50.00 25.93 15.63 10.40 7.41 5.54 4.30 3.43 2.80 2.33 1.97 1.68 1.46 1.27 1.12
5 68.75 25.93 12.11 6.56 3.94 2.54 1.73 1.23 0.91 0.69 0.54 0.42 0.34 0.28 0.23
6 81.25 33.33 16.21 8.99 5.48 3.58 2.46 1.76 1.31 0.99 0.77 0.61 0.50 0.41 0.34
7 89.06 44.31 19.51 9.50 5.10 2.96 1.83 1.19 0.81 0.57 0.41 0.30 0.23 0.17 0.14
8 93.75 55.74 23.97 11.36 5.96 3.40 2.07 1.33 0.89 0.62 0.44 0.33 0.24 0.19 0.15
9 96.48 65.98 30.22 13.89 6.86 3.65 2.07 1.24 0.78 0.50 0.34 0.24 0.17 0.12 0.09
10 98.05 74.44 37.82 17.07 8.13 4.17 2.29 1.33 0.81 0.52 0.34 0.23 0.16 0.12 0.08

When CFAS is used, the EB schedule is built on a multi-slotframe Multi-Slotframe

Chof
structure, which is characterized by the following two parameters: slotframe slotframe slotframe slotframe
• S: The number of slotframes of which it is composed. 0 n0 n5 n10
• As : The number of advertisement slots that each slotframe 1 n1 n6
has. The advertisement slots are consecutive and are located 2 n2 n7
at the beginning of each slotframe. 3 n3 n8
If we call C the number of available channels, it is obvious that the 4 n4 n9
number of advertisement cells is given by the following formula:
Figure 2: CFAS using vertical indexing in the case where
Ac = S × As × C. (2)
there are 11 nodes (including PAN coordinator), S = 4 and
Each advertisement cell has a unique index. A node transmits EBs in As = 1. Node identifiers are consecutive and start from 0.
one of the advertisement cells, and the index of this cell is calculated
based on the node’s identifier id through the following formula:
Multi-Slotframe
cellidx = id mod Ac . (3) Chof
slotframe slotframe slotframe slotframe
Apparently, to avoid collision, each advertisement cell must be 0 n0 n1 n2 n3
assigned to at most one node. For this purpose, CFAS requires the 1 n4 n5 n6 n7
following rule to be satisfied: 2 n8 n9 n10
idi . id j mod Ac , (4) 3
where idi and id j are the unique identifiers of any two nodes i, j. 4
A necessary but not sufficient condition to apply this rule is the
number of advertisement slots to be at least equal to the number of Figure 3: CFAS using horizontal indexing in the case where
nodes. When this condition is met, the rule can be simply satisfied there are 11 nodes (including PAN coordinator), S = 4 and
if consecutive identifiers are given to the nodes. As = 1. Node identifiers are consecutive and start from 0.
At this point, it should be noted that the PAN coordinator may
not have any restrictions on power consumption, and it is allowed to
send EBs in all the advertisement slots. For this case, we propose an of the lowest channel offset to the cell of the highest channel
enhanced version of CFAS, called ECFAS (Enhanced CFAS), where offset. Considering consecutive node identifiers, this method
the PAN coordinator uses all the advertisement cells of channel concentrates EB transmissions into the smallest possible
offset 0, regardless of its identifier. These cells are not taken into number of advertisement slots.
account during the advertisement cell indexing. (2) Horizontal Indexing: Beginning from the lowest channel
offset, the cells of the same channel offset are indexed before
4.1 Advertisement cell indexing the cells of the next channel offset. In the context of a channel
Assigning indices to advertisement cells is a necessary process for offset, the cell of the first advertisement slot is numbered
the operation of CFAS. However, CFAS does not require a predefined first, the cell of the second advertisement slot is numbered
method for this purpose. As it is also proposed in the literature, we second and so on. This method can be used to distribute
consider vertical and horizontal cell arrangement strategies: nodes as equally as possible among advertisement slots.
(1) Vertical Indexing: Starting from the first advertisement slot, Fig. 2 shows an example of CFAS using vertical indexing, while
the cells of each advertisement slot are numbered before the Fig. 3 shows an example of CFAS using horizontal indexing. In
cells of the next advertisement slot. Within an advertisement both examples, there are 11 nodes, including the PAN coordinator,
slot, the cell indexing is performed sequentially, from the cell and the multi-slotframe structure consists of 4 slotframes, each of

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Session: IEEE 802.15.4 TSCH MSWiM’18, October 28-November 2, 2018, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Multi-Slotframe Multi-Slotframe
Chof Chof
slotframe slotframe slotframe slotframe slotframe slotframe
0 pc pc pc pc 0 n0 n5 n10
1 n0 n4 n8 1 n1 n6
2 n1 n5 n9 2 n2 n7
3 n2 n6 3 n3 n8
4 n3 n7 4 n4 n9

Figure 4: ECFAS using vertical indexing in the case where,
except from the PAN coordinator (pc), there are 10 other
nodes whose identifiers are consecutive and start from 0,
S = 4 and As = 1.
Multi-Slotframe
Chof
slotframe slotframe slotframe slotframe
0 pc pc pc pc
1 n0 n1 n2 n3
2 n4 n5 n6 n7
3 n8 n9
4 channel using Eq. (5), where ASN is the ASN of the slot to which
Figure 5: ECFAS using horizontal indexing in the case where,
except from the PAN coordinator (pc), there are 10 other
nodes whose identifiers are consecutive and start from 0,
S = 4 and As = 1.
which has 1 advertisement slot. To avoid confusion, we note that
n0 means node with id 0, n1 node with id 1, and so on.
If ECFAS is used instead of CFAS, then the examples of Figs. 2
and 3 are modified as shown in Figs. 4 and 5, respectively. In the
case of ECFAS, as we previously mentioned, the advertisement cells
that are used by the PAN coordinator are not indexed; that is the
indexing starts from channel offset 1.
4.2 Advertisement Timeslot Partitioning
With CFAS, as well as with other methods proposed in the literature,
each advertiser sends exactly one EB per multi-slotframe. Setting
the EB rate is performed by adjusting the multi-slotframe length.
The smaller the multi-slotframe length, the higher the EB rate, and
vice versa. However, the length of the multi-slotframe also affects
the number of advertisement slots required by CFAS to achieve
collision-free EB transmissions. ÎŚ high EB rate may lead to a high
number of advertisement slots in multi-slotframe. For example,
in a network with 100 nodes, 10 available channels for EBs, and
a multi-slotframe consisting of one slotframe, CFAS requires 10
advertisement slots; that is with a typical slotframe of 101 slots,
10% of slots are spent for EBs instead of data transmissions.
In order to tackle this problem we use the Advertisement Slot
Partitioning (ATP) technique [5]. ATP is a technique allowing the
transmission of multiple EBs per channel within a single advertise-
ment slot. According to ATP, an advertisement slot is partitioned
into smaller parts called subslots. A subslot is a compressed times-
lot version that is used for the transmission of one EB. Combining
ATP and (E)CFAS, we can increase the number of advertisement
cells without increasing the number of advertisement slots. An
Figure 6: CFAS combining vertical indexing and ATP in the
case where there are two subslots per advertisement slot,
node identifiers are consecutive and start from 0, S = 2 and
As = 1. The dashed lines separate the subslots of advertise-
ment slots.
example of CFAS together with ATP is shown in Fig. 6. In this
example, each advertisement slot has two subslots, and thus there
is a double number of advertisement cells compared to the number
of advertisement cells of the generic CFAS version.
In ATP, a node transmitting in a sublot calculates the related
the subslot belongs. In order to generate a different radio channel
per subslot and boost the performance of (E)CFAS, we introduce
the concept of the Serial Subslot Number (SSN ). SSN is the serial
number of the subslot within the slotframe containing it, and is
equal to the number of subslots elapsed since the start of the slot-
frame. Eq. (5) treats the subslots of an advertisement slot with the
same way as the generic TSCH channel generation function (i.e.,
Eq. (1)) treats consecutive advertisement slots.
RadioChannel = map[(ASN + ChannelO f f set + SSN ) % C] (5)
5 PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
In this section we evaluate the above-mentioned versions of our
proposed method through a comparison both between each other
(CFAS to ECFAS) as well as with ECV and ECH [8]. According to a
series of simulations we did as well as to the comparison results that
are available in the literature, ECH and ECV present the best perfor-
mance among the available approaches in the literature. Therefore,
in this paper, we present comparison results for ECH and ECV only.
Additionally, we demonstrate that Eq. (5) makes ATP an effective
solution to minimize the number of advertisement slots without
compromising on the performance. As performance criterion, we
use the average joining time of a node. For the calculation of the
average joining time we used a simulator developed in Python.
We distinguish two versions of (E)CFAS using the two widely-
used cell indexing techniques described in Section 4.1. (E)CFASV
corresponds to the vertical indexing method and (E)CFASH to the
horizontal one. Table 2 summarizes the notations used in this sec-
tion along with their meanings.
5.1 Comparing (E)CFAS with ECV and ECH
In order to compare (E)CFAS with ECV and ECH we record the
average joining time of a node for different number of neighboring
advertisers in two cases: (a) when the PAN coordinator is included
in them (1-hop architecture), and (b) when it is not included (2-hop

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Session: IEEE 802.15.4 TSCH MSWiM’18, October 28-November 2, 2018, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Table 2: List of notations and their description used in the

evaluation part.

Notation Description
Collision-Free Advertisement Scheduling.
CFAS
This is the general proposed approach.
Enhanced CFAS. We allow the PAN coordinator
ECFAS to use all the advertisement cells of channel
offset 0 when it has unlimited power resources.
(E)CFAS with the horizontal cell indexing
(E)CFASH
as it is described in Section 4.1.
(E)CFAS with the vertical cell indexing
(E)CFASV
as it is described in Section 4.1.
Advertisement Timeslot Partitioning. It enables
ATP
multi-EB transmissions in a single timeslot. Figure 7: Comparison between different versions of (E)CFAS
A recently proposed scheduling algorithm for an 1-hop network.
ECH
(Horizontal version) [8].
A recently proposed scheduling algorithm
ECV
(Vertical version) [8].

architecture). For the former, a dense topology is used where each

node is in the range of the others. This also applies to the second
topology with the exception that the PAN coordinator has in its
range only one node, which is not the node used for the joining
time calculation. For each combination of the above-mentioned
topologies, the considered methods and the number of neighboring
advertisers, the following procedure has been used. Each node starts
to operate at a random time within the first 100 seconds from the
start of the network; that is the start of the PAN coordinator. After
all the nodes join the network, a particular node is forced to be
disconnected multiple times and attempts to rejoin. The joining
time from 10000 rejoin attempts is collected. It should be noted that
a rejoining attempt is completed only when an EB is received. In
case of EB collisions, we consider the worst case where no valid EB
is received.
During the simulations, we assume that the nodes operate on the
2.4GHz band with 16 available channels and the network uses the
default values of the timeslot template for this band, combined with
a slotframe size of 101 slots. A multi-slotframe of 5 slotframes is
used, while only the first slot of each slotframe is an advertisement
slot. The identifiers of the nodes are consecutive and start from
zero. It is worth noting that during a join attempt the channels are
scanned according to the standard; that is in order from the lowest
channel number to the highest. Finally, the scanning duration of
each channel is twice the length of the multi-slotframe, that is in
the range defined by the standard.
For presentation purposes we split the results in two figures
per scenario. On one hand, as it is shown in Fig. 7, when the PAN
coordinator is a physical neighbor of the joining node, the ECFAS
versions perform much better than the CFAS ones. The performance
gap is higher with a few advertisers. It is straight forward that by
allowing the coordinator node to transmit more often, the average
joining time is impressively improved. On the other hand, as it is
illustrated in Fig. 8, ECFASV provides the best overall performance
achieving up to 40% less average joining time compared to ECV
Figure 8: Comparison between ECFASV and ECV-ECH for
an 1-hop network.
and ECH. It is worth mentioning here that ECFAS presents a linear
decrease of the joining time due to its collision avoidance ability.
The corresponding results for the 2-hop scenario are depicted
in Figs. 9 and 10. In Fig. 9 , we have grouped CFASV and ECFASV
since they exhibit an identical performance. This is due to the fact
that the neighbors of the joining node use the same advertisement
cells. ECFASH performs slightly better than CFASH and CFASV
(or ECFASV) when the neighbors are less than 7. In the rest of
the cases, its performance slightly worsens compared to the other
approaches. This difference in performance is due to the different
way of allocating advertisement cells to nodes; that is the different
EB schedules with the same EB rate lead to different joining times.
Comparing ECFASH and CFASV to ECV and ECH (see Fig. 10),
we observe that ECFASH performs always better than ECV and
ECH, while CFASV is better when more than 4 advertisers exist
in the network. This also happens because of the different cell
allocation mechanism. CFASV and ECFASH exhibit up to 70% and
60% faster joining times compared to ECV and ECH, respectively.
The performance of ECV and ECH is worse due to the collisions
that take place during the advertisement process.

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Extra advertisement slots

2

0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Multi-slotframe length (in slotframes)

Figure 11: Extra advertisement slots needed by (E)CFAS for

Figure 9: Comparison between different versions of (E)CFAS different multi-slotframe lengths (i.e. EB rates) compared to
for a 2-hop network. both ECV and ECH, when there are 100 nodes and all the
channel of 2.4Ghz band are available for EBs.

4.5
ECV ECH

Avg slots used for sensing

4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Neighboring Advertisers

Figure 12: Average slots an advertiser stays active, in ECV

and ECH, after its association to the network, in order to
Figure 10: Comparison between CFASV-ECFASH and ECV- find an unused advertisement cell.
ECH for a 2-hop network.

5.2 Evaluating the use of ATP in (E)CFAS

At this point, we should also mention that in the aforementioned
simulation all the methods allocated the same number of adver-
tisement slots. If we used a much smaller multi-slotframe (i.e. a
much higher EB rate) and a much larger total number of network
nodes, then (E)CFAS would use more advertisement slots than ECV
and ECH. However, considering ATP, the number of additional
slots required by the (E)CFAS is negligible, as we can see in Fig. 11.
This figure presents the number of additional advertisement slots
required by (E)CFAS compared to ECV and ECH, in a large network
consisting of 100 nodes, when various multi-slotframe lengths are
used while all the channel of 2.4Ghz band are available. We could
consider a smaller number of channels, but this would lead to an
unfair comparison as it would increase the probability of collisions
in ECV and ECH, thus increasing the average joining time.
On the other hand, in ECV and ECH an advertiser must initially
sense the advertisement cells in order to find an unused one. As
a result, there is a higher duty cycle of advertisers compared to
(E)CFAS. Fig. 12 shows the extra duty cycle of advertisers as it was
captured in our simulations.
As we mentioned in Section 4.2, ATP can be joined with (E)CFAS
to reduce the number of reserved advertisement slots. In Fig. 13,
we present the number of advertisement slots required by CFAS
for a wide range of nodes and channels, with and without the ATP
mechanism. It is obvious that the gain from using ATP is larger
as the number of nodes increases and the number of channels
decreases.
However, the use of ATP raises the following question: can ATP
negatively affect the joining time of (E)CFAS? A set of simulations
we conducted for this purpose showed that ATP does not affect
the performance of (E)CFAS, provided that the proposed channel
calculation, which is described in Eq. (5), is used. Otherwise, ATP in-
creases the joining time when the nodes are concentrated in a small
number of channel offsets, something that occasionally happens
when the horizontal indexing is used. In Fig. 14 we indicatively
present the difference in performance in a such a case.
6 SUMMARY & FUTURE WORK
In this paper we studied the problem of EB scheduling in IEEE802.15.4-
TSCH networks. While other approaches in the literature suffer

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4.5
25 Without ATP
Advertisement slots
4
20 ATP using normal channel calculation

Average Joining Time (s)

3.5
15 ATP using proposed channel calculation
3
10
2.5
5
2
0
1.5
20 40 60 80 100
Network Nodes 1
0.5
ATP Enabled ATP Disabled
0
(a) C=5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Number of Advertisers
12
Advertisement slots

10 Figure 14: Average joining time of a node when CFASH is

8 used with and without ATP, in a network with 5 available
6 channels for EBs, and the minimum possible number of ad-
4
vertisement slots.
2
0
20 40 60 80 100 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Network Nodes
This research has been financially supported by General Secretariat
ATP Enabled ATP Disabled
for Research and Technology (GSRT) and the Hellenic Foundation
(b) C=10 for Research and Innovation (HFRI) (Scholarship Code: 2160).

8 REFERENCES
Advertisement slots

6 [1] T. Phan Duy, T. Dinh, and Y. Kim. 2016. A rapid joining scheme based on
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(c) C=15
Figure 13: Number of required advertisement slots per
multi-slotframe with and without ATP and different num-
bers of available channels. ATP with 2 subslots per adver-
tisement slot is considered.
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