Efficient Probabilistic Counter-Based Broadcast for Low-Power & Lossy Networks

Abstract

Ensuring efficient multi-hop broadcast is often a challenge in IPv6-based Low Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) due to the lossy nature of their links, limited power, low bit rate, and a short communication range. In this paper, we propose a Probabilistic Counter-based broadcast (or PCB) scheme in order to overcome such a challenge. PCB has the merit of using the radio duty cycle timing specifications of LLNs to determine the waiting time in the counter-based scheme. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to investigate the benefits of combining probabilistic and counter-based broadcasting in the context of IPv6-based LLNs. Extensive Cooja-based simulations on various counter thresholds and probability values are performed to assess their impact on the performance of the suggested solution. Our results show that our proposed PCB can achieve extremely good performance with a high delivery ratio, low message retransmissions, and low broadcast delay.