TSMP, an acronym for Time Synchronized Mesh Protocol, was developed by
Dust Networks
Dust Networks, Inc. is an American company specializing in the design and manufacture of wireless sensor networks for industrial applications including process monitoring, condition monitoring, asset management, Environment, Health and Safety (E ...
as a communications protocol for self-organizing networks of wireless devices called ''motes''. TSMP devices stay synchronized to each other and communicate in time-slots, similar to other TDM (
time-division multiplexing
Time-division multiplexing (TDM) is a method of transmitting and receiving independent signals over a common signal path by means of synchronized switches at each end of the transmission line so that each signal appears on the line only a fracti ...
) systems. Such deterministic communication allows the devices to stay extremely low power, as the radios only turn on for the periods of scheduled communication. The protocol is designed to operate very reliably in a noisy environment. It uses channel hopping to avoid interference -- the packets between TSMP devices get sent on different radio channels depending on time of transmission. TSMP distinguishes itself from other time-slotted mesh-based protocols, in that time-slot timing is maintained continuously and enables a network to duty-cycle on a transmitter-receiver pair-wise basis, as opposed to putting the entire network to sleep for extended periods of time (as is done in a beacon-based protocol, such as
DigiMesh).
Dust Networks' underlying time synchronized mesh networking technology has been standardized by the HART Communications Foundation with the
WirelessHART
WirelessHART within telecommunications and computing, is a wireless sensor networking technology. It is based on the Highway Addressable Remote Transducer Protocol (HART). Developed as a multi-vendor, interoperable wireless standard, WirelessHA ...
protocol, the
International Society of Automation
The International Society of Automation (ISA), formerly known as The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society, is a non-profit technical society for engineers, technicians, businesspeople, educators and students, who work, study or are int ...
ISA100 standard and in internet protocol standards, such as
IEEE802.15.4E MAC layer, and IETF 6TiSCh.
Time synchronized mesh networking is marketed for applications that require reliability and ultra long battery life, typically measured in years.
It is intended for the industrial market for manufacturing-process monitoring and control.
See also
*
Wireless sensor network
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) refer to networks of spatially dispersed and dedicated sensors that monitor and record the physical conditions of the environment and forward the collected data to a central location. WSNs can measure environmental c ...
External links
TSMP Whitepaper(archived webpage as of October 2006
DigiMesh*Kristofer S. J. Pister and Lance Doherty
TSMP: Time Synchronized Mesh Protocol Proceedings of the IASTED International Symposium on Distributed Sensor Networks (DSN08), November 2008, Orlando, Florida, USA.
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Wireless sensor network