Abstract-RPL, the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks, is considered the de facto routing protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT). Since its standardization, RPL contributed to the advancement of communications in the world of tiny, embedded, networking devices, by providing, along with other standards, a baseline architecture for IoT. Several years later, we analyze the extent to which RPL lived up to the expectations defined by the IETF requirements, and tie our analysis to current trends, identifying the challenges RPL must face to remain on the forefront of IoT technology.
Abstract-The IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) is one of the emerging routing standards for multihop Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). RPL is based on the construction of a Destination-Oriented Directed Acyclic Graph (DODAG), which offers a loop-free topology to route data packets. While several routing metrics have been proposed in the literature, it is unclear how they perform with RPL. In this paper, we analyze the impact of different PHY and MAC metrics on the stability and efficiency of RPL. We highlight the fact that realistic conditions lead to instabilities and oscillations in the routing structure. While minimizing the hop length leads to a stable but poor routing structure, more sophisticated link metrics such as ETX reflect more clearly the radio link quality but increase the number of DODAG reconfigurations. We also provided a detailed methodology to measure the DODAG stability and to implement efficiently each routing metric with RPL.
The devices composing Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are very limited in terms of memory, processing power and battery. RPL has emerged as the de facto routing standard in low-power and lossy networks. While most of the proposals focus on minimizing the global energy consumption, we aim here at designing an energy-balancing routing protocol: each node should efficiently consume the same quantity of energy to improve the network lifetime. To this end, we exploit an Expected Lifetime metric, denoting the residual time of the nodes (time until the node will run out of energy). We propose mechanisms to detect the energy-bottleneck nodes and to spread the traffic load uniformly among them. While RPL constructs a Destination-Oriented Directed Acyclic Graph (DODAG) structure, it only implements single path. We propose here to exploit its natural multipath structure. This multipath approach helps reducing the number of DODAG reconstructions that leads to instabilities and convergence problems. Simulations highlight we improve both the routing reliability and the network lifetime.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.