RPL-based multipath Routing Protocols for Internet of Things on Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In the last few years, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) emerges and appears as an essential platform for prominent concept of Internet of Things (IoT). Their application ranges from so-called “smart cities”, “smart homes” over environmental monitoring. The connectivity in IoT mainly relies on RPL (IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Network) - a routing algorithm that constructs and maintains DODAGs (Destination Oriented Directed Acyclic Graph) to transmit data from sensors to root over a single path. However, due to the resource constraints of sensor nodes and the unreliability of wireless links, single-path routing approaches cannot be considered effective techniques to meet the performance demands of various applications. In order to overcome these problems, many individuals and group research focuses on multi-path solutions for RPL routing protocol. In this paper, we propose three multipath schemes based on RPL (Energy Load Balancing-ELB, Fast Local Repair-FLR and theirs combination-ELB-FLR) and integrate them in a modified IPv6 communication stack for IoT. These schemes are implemented in OMNET++ simulator and the experiment outcomes show that our approaches have achieved better energy efficiency, better end-to-end delay, packet delivery rate and network load balance compared to traditional solution of RPL.