IMSF: Improved Minimal Scheduling Function for Link Scheduling in 6TiSCH Networks

6TiSCH network uses the IEEE 802.15.4 Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) MAC protocol. Minimal Scheduling Function (MSF) describes how to manage the communication schedule and adapt the schedule according to the traffic pattern. However, MSF suffers from high signalling overhead. Further, it neither considers pending packets in the transmission queue nor considers the link quality for updating the TSCH cells. This paper proposes an Improved Minimal Scheduling Function (IMSF). The proposed scheme is implemented in the 6TiSCH simulator to evaluate its performance. It is observed that the proposed scheme can potentially reduce the 6P negotiation overhead, packet dropping probability and delay significantly compared to the benchmark schemes.