6TiSCH++ with Bluetooth 5 and Concurrent Transmissions

Targeting dependable communications for industrial Internet of Things applications, IETF 6TiSCH provides mechanisms for efficient scheduling, routing, and forwarding of IPv6 traffic across low-power wireless mesh networks. Yet, despite an overwhelming body of literature covering autonomous, centralized, and distributed scheduling schemes for 6TiSCH, the design of an effective control solution remains an open challenge. Our paper fills this gap with a novel multi-PHY approach that eliminates much of the 6TiSCH routing and link-layer overhead. Specifically, we leverage the physical layer (PHY) switching capabilities of modern single-radio, multi-protocol wireless platforms to build on recent work highlighting the viability of CT-based flooding protocols across the Bluetooth 5 (BT 5) PHYs, demonstrating the feasibility of single-radio devices injecting a BT 5-based CT flood within a standard IEEE 802.15.4 TSCH slotframe. We present experimental evaluation and analytical modeling showing how our solution can exploit BT 5's high data-rate PHYs for rapid data dissemination, while the coded PHYs can provide reliable 6TiSCH association and synchronization even under external RF interference. We further discuss how the proposed technique can be used to address other open challenges within 6TiSCH.