One of the main goals of wireless sensor networks is to permit the involved nodes to communicate with low energy budgets, as they are typically battery-powered. When such networks are employed in industrial scenarios, constraints about latency may have a significant role, too. The TSCH mechanism, and more in general TDMA schemes, rely on traffic scheduling, and consequently they can feature low power consumption and more predictable latency. Some recent proposals like PRIL-M enable further consistent energy savings, but unfortunately they cause at the same time a dramatic increase in latency. This work presents an extension of PRIL-M, we named PRIL-ML, that achieves a significantly shorter latency in exchange for a slight increase in power consumption. Its operating principles are first illustrated, then some approximate equations are provided for assessing analytically the improvements it achieves, starting from simulation results obtained for both standard TSCH and the original PRIL-M technique.

翻译：无线传感器网络的主要目标之一是使参与节点能够在低能耗预算下通信，因为这些节点通常由电池供电。当此类网络应用于工业场景时，延迟约束也可能具有重要作用。TSCH机制以及更广义的TDMA方案依赖于流量调度，因此能够实现低功耗和更可预测的延迟。近期提出的PRIL-M等方法可实现进一步显著的节能效果，但不幸的是它们同时会导致延迟急剧增加。本研究提出了一种PRIL-M的扩展方案，我们将其命名为PRIL-ML，该方案以功耗的轻微增加为代价实现了显著更低的延迟。本文首先阐述其工作原理，随后基于标准TSCH和原始PRIL-M技术的仿真结果，提供了若干近似方程以解析评估其性能提升。