Analytical traffic model of 6TiSCH using real-time in-band telemetry

Abstract

In industrial environments, the IETF 6TiSCH stack is a protocol stack consisting of standardized layers (IEEE 802.15.4, TSCH, 6LoWPAN, RPL, CoAP) that enable reliable wireless communications. To efficiently manage the network, gathering insights is critical. This allows for detecting traffic bottlenecks, predicting energy consumption, checking duty cycle limits, adjusting network topology, and identifying interference. As such, detailed knowledge of the traffic quantity can be used to create a digital twin of the network to help prevent node or network failures by re-configuring network parameters. To that end, this paper presents an analytical model to calculate the transmitted and received bytes for every node in a 6TiSCH network, considering the complete 6TiSCH network stack. Real-time in-band network telemetry is used to limit monitoring overhead by piggybacking information onto transmitted data packets. Simulations demonstrate that our model provides accurate predictions with a median of 95 to 99% under various circumstances, such as topology changes and packet loss. The model can enhance network robustness and can be extended to predict the energy consumption of 6TiSCH devices easily.