End-to-End Delay Enhancement in 6LoWPAN Testbed Using Programmable Network Concepts

This paper introduces a proof-of-concept 6LoWPAN testbed to study the integration of programmable network technologies in relaxed throughput and low-power IoT devices. Open source software and hardware platforms are used in the implemented testbed to increase the possibility of future network extension. The proposed architecture offers end-to-end connectivity via the 6LoWPAN gateway to integrate IPv6 hosts and the low data rate devices directly. Nowadays, SoftwareDefined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are the most promising technologies for dealing with the massive increase in M2M devices and achieving agile traffic. The developed approach in this paper is entitled tailored Software Defined-Network Function Virtualization (SD-NFV), which is aimed at reducing the end-to-end delay and improving the energy depletion in sensor nodes. Experimental scenarios of the implemented testbed are conducted using a simple sensing application and the obtained results indicate that the introduced approach is appropriate for constrained IoT devices. By utilizing SD-NFV scheme in 6LoWPAN network, the data delivery ratio increased by 5-14%, the node operational time prolonged by 70%, the end-to-end latency for gathering sensor data minimized by ≈160%, and the latency for transmitting control messages to a specified node diminished by ≈63% when compared to a traditional (non SDN-enabled) 6LoWPAN network

Self-Powered 6LoWPAN Sensor Node for Green IoT Edge Devices

Copyright © 2020 The Authors. In this paper, a simulation model and practical testbed for green Internet of Things (IoT) edge devices are proposed based on solar harvester with constant voltage-maximum power point tracking (CV-MPPT) technique. Billions of connected edge devices represent the essential part of the IoT through the IP-enabled sensor networks based on IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Network (6LoWPAN). In traditional IoT edge devices, the stored energy in the non-rechargeable battery determines the node lifetime while it is being depleted with time. Therefore, purchasing billions of such batteries is costly and must be disposed of efficiently. This paper is aimed at simulating and implementing a new class of green IoT edge devices that can report data wirelessly and powered perpetually using clean energy. The developed edge device utilizes solar energy harvesting mechanism through photovoltaic (PV) module, this approach will avoid periodical battery replacement and hence, the energy supplied to the sensor mode is not limited anymore. The implemented testbed is based on open-source hardware and software platforms while the simulation environment is based on MATLAB/SIMULINK 2019a. The effects of temperature and solar irradiance on the performance of the developed approach are examined in order to confirm the leverage of the proposed methodology scheme. The lifetime of the developed green IoT device is predicted based on the device's activities, current consumption, and energy storage capacity. The obtained results showed that the battery lifetime is extended by 38-49% when the edge device runs on an independent power source

Improving efficiency and security of IIoT communications using in-network validation of server certificate

The use of advanced communications and smart mechanisms in industry is growing rapidly, making cybersecurity a critical aspect. Currently, most industrial communication protocols rely on the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol to build their secure version, providing confidentiality, integrity and authentication. In the case of UDP-based communications, frequently used in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) scenarios, the counterpart of TLS is Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS), which includes some mechanisms to deal with the high unreliability of the transport layer. However, the (D)TLS handshake is a heavy process, specially for resource-deprived IIoT devices and frequently, security is sacrificed in favour of performance. More specifically, the validation of digital certificates is an expensive process from the time and resource consumption point of view. For this reason, digital certificates are not always properly validated by IIoT devices, including the verification of their revocation status; and when it is done, it introduces an important delay in the communications. In this context, this paper presents the design and implementation of an in-network server certificate validation system that offloads this task from the constrained IIoT devices to a resource-richer network element, leveraging data plane programming (DPP). This approach enhances security as it guarantees that a comprehensive server certificate verification is always performed. Additionally, it increases performance as resource-expensive tasks are moved from IIoT devices to a resource-richer network element. Results show that the proposed solution reduces DTLS handshake times by 50–60 %. Furthermore, CPU use in IIoT devices is also reduced, resulting in an energy saving of about 40 % in such devices.This work was financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the TRUE-5G project PID2019-108713RB-C54/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. It was also partially supported by the Ayudas Cervera para Centros Tecnológicos grant of the Spanish Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI) under the project EGIDA (CER-20191012), and by the Basque Country Government under the ELKARTEK Program, project REMEDY - Real tiME control and embeddeD securitY (KK-2021/00091)

Smart Flow Steering Agent for End-to-End Delay Improvement in Software-Defined Networks

لضمان الإستجابة للخطأ والإدارة الموزعة، يتم استخدام البروتوكولات الموزعة كأحد المفاهيم المعمارية الرئيسية التي تتضمنها شبكة الإنترنت. ومع ذلك، يمكن التغلب على عدم الكفاءة وعدم الاستقرار والقصور بمساعدة بنية الشبكات الجديدة التي تسمى الشبكات المعرفة بالبرمجيات SDN. الخاصية الرئيسية لهذه المعمارية هي فصل مستوى التحكم عن مستوى البيانات. إن تقليل التصادم سيؤدي إلى تحسين سرعة الإستجابة وزيادة البيانات المرسلة بصورة صحيحة، لهذا السبب يجب أن يكون هناك توزيع متجانس للحمل المروري عبر مسارات الشبكة المختلفة. تقدم هذه الورقة البحثية أداة توجيه ذكية SFSA لتوجيه تدفق البيانات بناءاً على ظروف الشبكة الحالية. لتحسين الإنتاجية وتقليل زمن الوصول، فإن الخوارزمية المقترحة SFSA تقوم بتوزيع حركة مرور البيانات داخل الشبكة على مسارات مناسبة ، بالإضافة إلى الإشراف على الإرتباطات التشعبية وحمل مسارات نقل البيانات. تم استخدام سيناريو خوارزمية توجيه شجرة الامتداد الدنياMST وأخرى مع خوارزمية التوجيه المعروفة بفتح أقصر مسار أولاً OSPF لتقييم جودة الخوارمية المقترحة SFSA . على سبيل المقارنة ، بالنسبة لخوارزميات التوجيه المذكروة آنفاً ، فقد حققت استراتيجيةSFSA المقترحة انخفاضاً بنسبة 2٪ في معدل ضياع حزم البيانات PDR ، وبنسبة تتراوح بين 15-45٪ في سرعة إستلام البيانات من المصدر إلى الالوجهة النهائية لحزمة البيانات وكذلك انخفاض بنسبة 23 ٪ في زمن رحلة ذهاب وعودة RTT . تم استخدام محاكي Mininet ووحدة التحكم POX لإجراء المحاكاة. ميزة أخرى من SFSA على MST و OSPF هي أن وقت التنفيذ والاسترداد لا يحمل تقلبات. يتقوم أداة التوجيه الذكية المقترحة في هذه الورقة البحثية من فتح أفقاً جديداً لنشر أدوات ذكية جديدة في شبكة SDN تعزز قابلية برمجة الشبكات وإدارتها .To ensure fault tolerance and distributed management, distributed protocols are employed as one of the major architectural concepts underlying the Internet. However, inefficiency, instability and fragility could be potentially overcome with the help of the novel networking architecture called software-defined networking (SDN). The main property of this architecture is the separation of the control and data planes. To reduce congestion and thus improve latency and throughput, there must be homogeneous distribution of the traffic load over the different network paths. This paper presents a smart flow steering agent (SFSA) for data flow routing based on current network conditions. To enhance throughput and minimize latency, the SFSA distributes network traffic to suitable paths, in addition to supervising link and path loads. A scenario with a minimum spanning tree (MST) routing algorithm and another with open shortest path first (OSPF) routing algorithms were employed to assess the SFSA. By comparison, to these two routing algorithms, the suggested SFSA strategy determined a reduction of 2% in packets dropped ratio (PDR), a reduction of 15-45% in end-to-end delay according to the traffic produced, as well as a reduction of 23% in round trip time (RTT). The Mininet emulator and POX controller were employed to conduct the simulation. Another advantage of the SFSA over the MST and OSPF is that its implementation and recovery time do not exhibit fluctuations. The smart flow steering agent will open a new horizon for deploying new smart agents in SDN that enhance network programmability and management

A Secure and Efficient Cluster-Based Authentication Scheme for Internet of Things (IoTs)

IPv6 over Low Power Wireless Personal Area Network 6LoWPAN) provides IP connectivity to the highly constrained nodes in the Internet of Things (IoTs). 6LoWPAN allows nodes with limited battery power and storage capacity to carry IPv6 datagrams over the lossy and error-prone radio links offered by the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, thus acting as an adoption layer between the IPv6 protocol and IEEE 802.15.4 network. The data link layer of IEEE 802.15.4 in 6LoWPAN is based on AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), but the 6LoWPAN standard lacks and has omitted the security and privacy requirements at higher layers. The sensor nodes in 6LoWPAN can join the network without requiring the authentication procedure. Therefore, from security perspectives, 6LoWPAN is vulnerable to many attacks such as replay attack, Man-in-the-Middle attack, Impersonation attack, and Modification attack. This paper proposes a secure and efficient cluster-based authentication scheme (CBAS) for highly constrained sensor nodes in 6LoWPAN. In this approach, sensor nodes are organized into a cluster and communicate with the central network through a dedicated sensor node. The main objective of CBAS is to provide efficient and authentic communication among the 6LoWPAN nodes. To ensure the low signalling overhead during the registration, authentication, and handover procedures, we also introduce lightweight and efficient registration, de-registration, initial authentication, and handover procedures, when a sensor node or group of sensor nodes join or leave a cluster. Our security analysis shows that the proposed CBAS approach protects against various security attacks, including Identity Confidentiality attack, Modification attack, Replay attack, Man-in-the-middle attack, and Impersonation attack. Our simulation experiments show that CBAS has reduced the registration delay by 11%, handoff authentication delay by 32%, and signalling coby 37% compared to the SGMS (Secure Group Mobility Scheme) and LAMS (Light-Wight Authentication & Mobility Scheme)

Heterogeneous Networks for the IoT and Machine Type Communications

The Internet of Things promises to be a key-factor in the forthcoming industrial and social revolution. The Internet of Things concept rely on pervasive communications where ’things’ are ’always connected’. The focus of the thesis is on Heterogeneous Networks for Internet of Things and Machine Type Communications. Heterogeneous Networks are an enabling factor of paramount important in order to achieve the ’always connected’ paradigm. On the other hand, Machine Type Communications are deeply different from Human-to-Human communications both in terms of traffic patterns and requirements. This thesis investigate both concepts. In particular, here are studied short and long range solutions for Machine-to-machine applications. For this work a dual approach has been followed: for the short-range solutions analysis an experimental approach has been privileged; meanwhile for the long-range solutions analysis a theoretical and simulation approach has been preferred. In both case, a particular attention has been given to the feasibility of the solutions proposed, hence solutions based on products that already exist in the market have been privileged

Cluster-based group mobility support for smart IoT

IPv6 over Low Power Wireless Personal Area Network (6LoWPAN) connects the highly constrained sensor nodes with the internet using the IPv6 protocol. 6LoWPAN has improved the scalability of the Internet of Things (IoTs) infrastructure and allows mobile nodes to send packets over the IEEE 802.15. 4 wireless network. Several mobility managements schemes have been suggested for handling the registration and handover procedures in 6LoWPAN. However, these schemes have performance constraints, such as increased transmission cost, signalling overhead, registration, and handover latency. To address these issues, we propose a novel cluster-based group mobility scheme (CGM6) for 6LoWPAN. To reduce the signalling cost in the CGM6 scheme, we propose to combine the functions of the Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) server and Local Mobility Anchor (LMA) in AMAG6 (AAA+ MAG for 6LoWPAN). AMAG6 acts as a cluster head and exchange its information directly with its neighbouring AMAG6 during the mobility. Furthermore, AMAG6 is responsible for the binding and authentication process. To reduce the transmission cost, we also propose enhancements in registration and Handover procedures. The performance of CGM6 is evaluated through extensive simulations. The simulation results show that CGM6 has reduced the handoff latency by 32%, registration delay by 11% and transmission cost by 37% compared to the state-of-the-art mobility management schemes

Load balancing and context aware enhancements for RPL routed Internet of Things.

Internet of Things (IoT) has been paving the way for a plethora of potential applications, which becomes more spatial and demanding. The goal of this work is to optimise the performance within the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) in the network layer.RPL still suffers from unbalanced load traffic among the candidate parents. Consequently, the overloaded parent node drains its energy much faster than other candidate parent nodes. This may lead to an early disconnection of a part of the network topology and affect the overall network reliability. To solve this problem, a new objective function (OF) has been proposed to usher better load balancing among the bottleneck candidate parents, and keep the overloaded nodes lifetime thriving to longer survival.Moreover, several IoT applications have antagonistic requirements but pertinent, which results in a greater risk of affecting the network reliability, especially within the emergency scenarios. With the presence of this challenging issue, the current standardised RPL OFs cannot sufficiently fulfil the antagonistic needs of Low-power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) applications. In response to the above issues, a context adaptive OF has been proposed to facilitate exchanging the synergy information between the application and network layers. Thus, the impact of the antagonistic requirements based on context parameters will be mitigated via rationalizing the selection decision of the routing path towards the root node.We implemented the proposed protocol and verified all our findings through excessive measurements via simulations and a realistic deployment using a real testbed of a multi-hop LLNs motes. The results proved the superiority of our solution over the existing ones with respect to end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio and network lifetime. Our contribution has been accepted initially to be adopted within the standard body Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)