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Abstract - Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) represent one of IoT purposes. The OpenWSN OS and OpenMote hardware
the key technologies in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platform are the examples of such initiative. OpenWSN OS
applications. Recently, the OpenMote platform has drawn integrates the OpenWSN protocol stack with Free Real Time
significant attention to IIoT research community. The OpenMote Operating System (FreeRTOS). The OpenWSN is particularly
is a representative of new generation open-hardware platforms well suited for IIoT applications. The applications for
that is particularly adapted to IIoT applications. The OpenWSN industrial processes require a very high reliability and
is IoT operating system (OS) that incorporates the complete immunity to interference and multipath fading.
communication protocol stack for industrial WSN. This paper
presents the OpenWSN protocol stack and results of The corner stone of OpenWSN protocol stack is
performance evaluation of entire OpenWSN implementation on IEEE802.15.4e Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH)
OpenMote hardware platform. Performance evaluation is based protocol [5]. This protocol uses frequency channel hopping
on traffic generation and measurement of relevant metrics. The technique which makes communication very resilient to
selected metrics are: round-trip time, packet loss rate and interference and multipath fading. IPv6 based communication,
throughput. which enables the seamless integration of WSN network to the
Internet, also suites IIoT applications. Since nodes in WSN
KeywordsInternet of Things; OpenWSN; OpenMote; WSN; networks are constrained devices, for the practical realization
6LoWPAN; IEEE802.15.4e; TSCH; Industrial IoT; 6TiSCH
of reliable and high-quality industrial WSNs, the performance
evaluation of such networks is essential. The performance can
I. INTRODUCTION be evaluated by measuring various metrics. In this paper, the
The Internet of Things (IoT) is technology that grows very following metrics are selected: round-trip time, packet loss
rapidly in recent time. It is based on concept of smart objects, rate and throughput.
i.e. physical objects equipped with sensors and software which The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 gives the
enables them to monitor various parameters in its environment overview of OpenWSN protocol stack and its main
and react to their changes, thus establishing the functionalities. Section 3 describes the OpenMote-based IIoT
communication between humans, computing systems and testbed setup and parameter settings. In Section 4, the results
smart objects. of performance evaluation are presented and discussed.
WSNs are the corner stone of wide area IoT application. Section 5 gives the conclusions and future work.
WSN consists of distributed nodes capable of collecting
various information using sensors and send them via other II. OPENWSN PROTOCOL STACK
nodes in network towards computer systems for processing, as
The OpenWSN protocol stack is illustrated in Fig. 1 [6].
well as transferring data in opposite direction. WSN provides
IEEE 802.15.4-2006 is implemented at physical layer. It
the interface between physical world and computer systems.
includes both physical and Medium Access Layer (MAC)
Deployment of WSN in industrial applications draws
specifications. It has been designed primarily for Low Rate
particular attention. Common industrial WSN applications are
Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR-WPAN) but soon
smart grid and home automation [1,2], condition and
became de-facto standard for WSNs [7]. The main aspect of
performance monitoring of the industrial machines and plants,
IEEE 802.15.4 is to enable low-cost, low-speed ubiquitous
industrial automation, environmental sensing [3,4], etc.
communication between nearby devices with poor underlying
Recent trends in IoT activities are directed towards the infrastructure. Its basic framework assumes 10 meter
open-hardware and open-software prototyping and communications area at 250 kbps. IEEE 802.15.4-2006
development. This is recognized as an important step in terms standard's revision defines 4 different physical layers. The
of standardization activities and design of new applications for OpenWSN uses the 2.4GHz worldwide ISM frequency band
Hop count Payload size: 20 bytes In this test scenario, the queue overflow happens for 2 and
3 hops and 300 ms interpacket time, and 3 hops and 600 ms
1 0.53 interpacket time. PDR is very low for these tests, and queue
2 0.53 overflow didnt happen. This can be explained by the fact that
3 0.53
only 2 active timeslots are available. Two motes cant have
dedicated time slot now. Additionally, two active timeslots are
shared among all motes and used for data traffic, as well as for
transmission of EBs and data link-layer packets for uRES
protocol. Data link-layer packets are used for logical link
PLR is low and the throughput is the same as for test establishment between motes and have the higher priority than
scenario 1. However, RTT is significantly lower. The main data traffic packets. When these packets are transferred, one or
reason is that slotframe length is reduced from 19 to 9 both active time slots become occupied for some period of
timeslots. This significantly reduces the time that packet is time. Depending on duration of that period and interpacket
waiting for dedicated timeslot. RTT variations also follow a time of data traffic, the queue overflow may happen. The
typical pattern as for test scenario 1. probability of queue overflow is higher if the mote is more
hops away. In order to achieve longer distances, it is necessary root. The PDR is low in all test scenarios, assuming that there
to increase the interpacket time. The increase in interpacket is no packet queue overflow. This indicates that OpewWSN
time significantly decreased the throughput. OS and OpenMote platform have high reliability, which is
particularly suitable for industrial applications.
In this test scenario, the initial RTT is low due to reduction
in slotframe length, but RTT increases with the number of In order to correctly apply the OpenWSN protocol stack in
hops. Fig. 8 illustrates RTT variations for the first 100 queries IIoT, the first step is to analyze the network size, traffic
in this test scenario. Here, RTT variations do not follow the patterns and requirements in terms of throughput, latency and
typical pattern as in test scenario 1. With only two available power consumption. Then, the appropriate scheduling
timeslots in slotframe, is not possible to reserve a certain algorithm should be chosen and particularly purpose-built.
timeslot for communication between two motes in consecutive With these prerequisites, the values for slotframe length and
slotframes. Instead, two active timeslots are shared among all number of active timeslots will satisfy requirements and
motes which cause random packet waiting time for the free should be implemented in firmware.
timeslot, hence random RTT variations. There is a competition
with other motes for available timeslot at each hop the packet As a conclusion, the preliminary experimantal results show
travels. That explains the increase in RTT with the number of that OpenWSN protocol stack requires the trade-off between
hops. latency, throughput, reliability and power consumption. As a
future work, different settings will be tested, with more
parameters included. Additionally, OpenWSN OS and Contiki
OS performances will be compared.
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