Combined experimental and simulation evaluation of interference-resilient and energy-efficient wireless sensor networks using ESP32, TSCH, and multi-criteria decision analysis

Introduction Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) used in industrial monitoring and Internet of Things (IoT) applications must simultaneously maintain reliable data transmission, low communication delay, and efficient energy consumption under resource and interference constraints. Methods This study combines an ESP32-based hardware-assisted interference-emulation platform with large-scale OMNeT++ network modeling and multi-criteria evaluation. A 300-node WSN comprising 240 end devices and 60 routers was evaluated using Star, Tree, conventional Mesh, and Mesh + Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) configurations. Performance was assessed using Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), mean transmission delay, energy consumption, and network-lifetime indicators. An additional reconstructed stochastic analysis used 20 independent runs per configuration, and scalability was evaluated for network populations from 50 to 1,000 nodes. Results In the archived scenario-level analysis, Mesh + TSCH increased PDR from 93% to 99%, reduced mean delay from 150 ms to 61 ms, reduced per-node energy consumption from 6.42 J to 2.14 J, and increased the reported LND from 30 to 120 days relative to conventional Mesh. In the reconstructed analysis, Mesh + TSCH maintained higher PDR (79.26 ± 0.83% vs. 51.46 ± 2.49%) and lower per-node energy consumption (59.02 ± 0.65 J vs. 125.96 ± 0.82 J), but showed higher mean end-to-end delay (97.18 ± 5.56 ms vs. 57.84 ± 1.44 ms). Discussion The results indicate that TSCH-enabled coordination provides robust reliability and energy-efficiency advantages, whereas its latency effect depends on scheduling and implementation conditions. The combined findings demonstrate an application–dependent reliability–energy—latency trade-off and support multi-criteria evaluation for WSN architecture selection.