Mobility support over RPL using sensor nodes speed classification

Abstract

The interest for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is continuously growing especially with the emergence of applications such as smart grids, smart cities, e-health, etc. where billions of objets (sensors) will be permanently connected to the Internet. In this context, the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low power and Lossy Networks (RPL) is placed as the routing standard for the next generation multi-hop WSNs. The RPL scheme fits the sensor nodes characteristics since the protocol was originally designed for energy efficiency. Nevertheless, in the case of sensor nodes' movement, RPL poorly adapts to such scenarios which rapidly alters the network performance. In this paper, we investigate the problem of mobility support over RPL. Therefore, we propose a new Sensor Nodes' Speed Classifier (SNSC) to predict the sensor nodes' movement in the network. Then, we exploit the speed values-predicted by the SNSC model-to enhance the behavior of the native RPL in the mobility context. Our modified RPL scheme is called Mobility Prediction based RPL (MP-RPL). To evaluate the performance of MP-RPL, we first validate the SNSC model using the Cooja/Contiki simulation environment. Then, we compare MP-RPL to the native RPL in terms of Packet Loss Rate (PLR) and Packet Delivery Delay (PDD).