LOADng-IoT: An Enhanced Routing Protocol for Internet of Things Applications over Low Power Networks

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging paradigm that proposes the connection of objects to exchange information in order to reach a common objective. In IoT networks, it is expected that the nodes will exchange data between each other and with external Internet services. However, due to deployment costs, not all the network devices are able to communicate with the Internet directly. Thus, other network nodes should use Internet-connected nodes as a gateway to forward messages to Internet services. Considering the fact that main routing protocols for low-power networks are not able to reach suitable performance in the displayed IoT environment, this work presents an enhancement to the Lightweight On-demand Ad hoc Distance-vector Routing Protocol—Next Generation (LOADng) for IoT scenarios. The proposal, named LOADng-IoT, is based on three improvements that will allow the nodes to find Internet-connected nodes autonomously and dynamically, decreasing the control message overhead required for the route construction, and reducing the loss of data messages directed to the Internet. Based on the performed assessment study, which considered several number of nodes in dense, sparse, and mobility scenarios, the proposed approach is able to present significant results in metrics related to quality-of-service, reliability, and energy efficiency.

Energy Consumption Evaluation of a Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks in Mesh Scenarios for Precision Agriculture

“…As future work, it is relevant to add knowledge of the RPL’s topology and metrics to compare with other existing routing protocols in WSNs, e.g., Lightweight On-demand Ad hoc Distance-vector Routing Protocol - Next Generation (LOADng) [ 23 ] and LOADng-IoT [ 24 ], and evaluate the RPL under other metrics and network topologies, as well as propose modifications to the RPL metrics to consider the context-awareness and its virtual topologies, and finally, examine authentication and authorization methods [ 25 ].…”

A mobility solution for low power and lossy networks using the LOADng protocol

“…LLNs are composed of devices with severe computational constraints. 36 Features such as processing, storage capacity, and node communication make the performance of these networks closely related to the routing protocol deployed. So the data can travel on an LLN, especially when the network routes have many intermediate nodes between source and destination, routing protocols must be efficient in their traffic control as well as in the complexity of their network algorithm.…”

“…Considering the advantages presented in the use of a reactive protocol in an LLN and the need to support IoT applications, a solution called LOADng-IoT was proposed. 36 It is an enhancement to LOADng to enable the protocol to discover and maintain routes for Internet-directed traffic on IoT networks. In the solution, a node without a direct Internet connection can find nodes with this feature and use its connection to perform tasks that require access to external services.…”

Routing Protocols for Low Power and Lossy Networks in Internet of Things Applications

“…In this case, the nodes without this capacity can use Internet-Connected (IC) devices as a gateway (or bridge) to communicate with external services and applications. Based on this specific heterogeneous IoT scenario, Sobral et al [95] have proposed LOADng-IoT. The proposal introduces a new route discovery mechanism for the nodes to find IC nodes automatically without the need for a predefined gateway configuration.…”