Evaluation of RPL’s Single Metric Objective Functions

In this paper, we evaluate the performance of RPL (IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks) based on the Objective Function being used to construct the Destination Oriented Directed Acyclic Graph (DODAG). Using the Cooja simulator, we compared Objective Function Zero (OF0) with the Minimum Rank with Hysteresis Objective Function (MRHOF) in terms of average power consumption, packet loss ratio, and average end-to-end latency. Our study shows that RPL performs better in terms of packet loss ratio and average endto-end latency when MRHOF is used as an objective function. However, the average power consumption is noticeably higher compared to OF0

Adaptive Energy Saving and Mobility Support IPv6 Routing Protocol in Low-Power and Lossy Networks for Internet of Things and Wireless Sensor Networks

Internet of Things (IoT) is an interconnection of physical objects that can be controlled, monitored and exchange information from remote locations over the internet while been connected to an Application Programme Interface (API) and sensors. It utilizes low-powered digital radios for communication enabling millions and billions of Low-power and Lossy Network (LLN) devices to communicate efficiently via a predetermined routing protocol. Several research gaps have identified the constraints of standardised versions of IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks evidently showing its lack of ability to handle the growing application needs and challenges. This research aims to handle routing from a different perspective extending from energy efficiency, to mobility aware and energy scavenging nodes thereby presenting numerous improvements that can suit various network topologies and application needs. Envisioning all the prospects and innovative services associated with the futuristic ubiquitous communication of IoT applications, we propose an adaptive Objective Function for RPL protocol known as Optimum Reliable Objective Function (OR-OF) having a fuzzy combination of five routing metrics which are chosen based on system and application requirements. It is an approach which combines the three proposed implemented Objective Functions within this thesis to enable the OR-OF adapt to different routing requirements for different IoT applications. The three proposed OFs are Energy saving Routing OF, Enhanced Mobility Support Routing OF and Optimized OF for Energy Scavenging nodes. All proposed OFs were designed, implemented, and simulated in COOJA simulator of ContikiOS, and mathematical models were developed to validate simulated results. Performance Evaluation indicated an overall improvement as compared with the standardised versions of RPL protocols and other related research works in terms of network lifetime with an average of 40%, packet delivery ratio of 21%, energy consumption of 82% and End-to-End Delay of 92%

Computational Intelligence Inspired Data Delivery for Vehicle-to-Roadside Communications

We propose a vehicle-to-roadside communication protocol based on distributed clustering where a coalitional game approach is used to stimulate the vehicles to join a cluster, and a fuzzy logic algorithm is employed to generate stable clusters by considering multiple metrics of vehicle velocity, moving pattern, and signal qualities between vehicles. A reinforcement learning algorithm with game theory based reward allocation is employed to guide each vehicle to select the route that can maximize the whole network performance. The protocol is integrated with a multi-hop data delivery virtualization scheme that works on the top of the transport layer and provides high performance for multi-hop end-to-end data transmissions. We conduct realistic computer simulations to show the performance advantage of the protocol over other approaches

Path Quality Estimator for 802.15.4e TSCH Fast Deployment Tool

[EN] This paper introduces a novel quality estimator that uses different metrics to decide the best path towards the root in Wireless Sensor Networks. The different metrics are assessed at medium access control layer (MAC), under the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, and are used at network layer, enhancing the best path selection process done by the routing protocol, and at the application layer, enabling visual quality indicators in the nodes. This quality function is used during deployment stage; ensuring nodes are located optimally and nimbly. This mechanism will help WSN¿s adoption in Industrial Internet of Things applications.This work is supported by IVACE (Insituto Valenciano de Competitividad Empresarial) through FEDER funding (exp. IMDEEA/2017/103).Vera-Pérez, J.; Todoli Ferrandis, D.; Santonja Climent, S.; Silvestre-Blanes, J.; Sempere Paya, VM. (2018). Path Quality Estimator for 802.15.4e TSCH Fast Deployment Tool. Telfor Journal (Online). 10(1):2-7. https://doi.org/10.5937/telfor1801002VS27101O. Gaddour, A. Koubâa, S. Chaudhry, M. Tezeghdanti, R. Chaari and M. Abid, 'Simulation and Performance Evaluation of DAG Construction with RPL,' in IEEE Third International Conference on Communications and Networking (ComNet), pp. 1-8, 2012.;IETF, 'RFC 6552 - Objective Function Zero for the Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL),' 2012.;IETF, 'RFC 6719 - The Minimum Rank with Hysteresis Objective Function,' 2012.;N. Pradeska, Widyawan, W. Najib and S. S. Kusumawardani, 'Performance Analysis of Objective Function MRHOF and OF0 in Routing Protocol RPL IPv6 Over Low Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN),' in 8th International Conference on Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ICITEE), Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2016.;P. O. Kamgueu, E. Nataf, T. D. Ndié and O. Festor, 'Energy-based routing metric for RPL,' Doctoral dissertation, INRIA, 2013.;H.-S. Kim, J. Paek and S. Bahk, 'QU-RPL: Queue utilization based RPL for load balancing in large scale industrial applications,' in 12th Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication and Networking (SECON), Seattle, WA, USA, 2015.;P. Gonizzi, R. Monica and G. Ferrari, 'Design and evaluation of a delay-efficient RPL routing metric,' in 9th International Wireless Communication and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC), Sardinia, Italy, 2013.;IETF, 'RFC 6551 - Routing Metrics Used for Path Calculation in Low-Power and Lossy Networks,' 2012.;N. Baccour, A. Koubâa, L. Mottola, M. A. Zúñiga, H. Youssef, C. A. Boano and M. Alves, 'Radio link quality estimation in wireless sensor networks: A survey,' ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), vol. 8 (4), 2012.;P. Karkazis, H. C. Leligou, L. Sarakis, T. Zahariadis, P. Trakadas, T. H. Velivassaki and C. Capsalis, 'Design of primary and composite routing metrics for RPL-compliant Wireless Sensor Networks,' in International Conference on Telecommunications and Multimedia (TEMU), Chania, Greece, 2012.;N. Baccour, A. Koubâa, H. Youssef, M. B. Jamâa, D. d. Rosário, M. Alves and L. B. Becker, 'F-LQE: A Fuzzy Link Quality Estimator for Wireless Sensor Networks,' in European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks (EWSN), Coimbra, Portugal, 2010.;S. Rekik, N. Baccour, M. Jmaiel and K. Drira, 'Holistic link quality estimation-based routing metric for RPL networks in smart grids,' in IEEE 27th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), Valencia, Spain, 2016.;O. Gaddour, A. Koubaa, N. Baccour and M. Abid, 'OF-FL: QoSaware fuzzy logic objective function for the RPL routing protocol,' in 12th International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt), Hammamet, Tunisia, 2014.;IETF, 'RFC 8180 - Minimal IPv6 over TSCH Mode of IEEE 802.15.4e (6TiSCH) Configuration,' 2017.;M. G. Amor, A. Koubâa, E. Tovar and M. Khalgui, 'Cyber-OF: An Adaptative Cyber-Physical Objective Function for Smart Cities Applications,' in 28th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS), Toulouse, France, 2016.;J. Vera-Pérez, D. Todolí-Ferrandis, J. Silvestre-Blanes, S. SantonjaCliment and V. Sempere-Paya, 'Path quality estimator for wireless sensor networks fast deployment tool,' 2017 25th Telecommunication Forum (TELFOR), Belgrade, 2017, pp. 1-4.

Performance Assessment of Routing Protocols for IoT/6LoWPAN Networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) proposes a disruptive communication paradigm that allows smart objects to exchange data among themselves to reach a common goal. IoT application scenarios are multiple and can range from a simple smart home lighting system to fully controlled automated manufacturing chains. In the majority of IoT deployments, things are equipped with small devices that can suffer from severe hardware and energy restrictions that are responsible for performing data processing and wireless communication tasks. Thus, due to their features, communication networks that are used by these devices are generally categorized as Low Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs). The considerable variation in IoT applications represents a critical issue to LLN networks, which should offer support to different requirements as well as keeping reasonable quality-of-service (QoS) levels. Based on this challenge, routing protocols represent a key issue in IoT scenarios deployment. Routing protocols are responsible for creating paths among devices and their interactions. Hence, network performance and features are highly dependent on protocol behavior. Also, based on the adopted protocol, the support for some specific requirements of IoT applications may or may not be provided. Thus, a routing protocol should be projected to attend the needs of the applications considering the limitations of the device that will execute them. Looking to attend the demand of routing protocols for LLNs and, consequently, for IoT networks, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has designed and standardized the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL). This protocol, although being robust and offering features to fulfill the need of several applications, still presents several faults and weaknesses (mainly related to its high complexity and memory requirement), which limits its adoption in IoT scenarios. An alternative to RPL, the Lightweight On-demand Ad Hoc Distancevector Routing Protocol – Next Generation (LOADng) has emerged as a less complicated routing solution for LLNs. However, the cost of its simplicity is paid for with the absence of adequate support for a critical set of features required for many IoT environments. Thus, based on the challenging open issues related to routing in IoT networks, this thesis aims to study and propose contributions to better attend the network requirements of IoT scenarios. A comprehensive survey, reviewing state-of-the-art routing protocols adopted for IoT, identified the strengths and weaknesses of current solutions available in the literature. Based on the identified limitations, a set of improvements is designed to overcome these issues and enhance IoT network performance. The novel solutions are proposed to include reliable and efficient support to attend the needs of IoT applications, such as mobility, heterogeneity, and different traffic patterns. Moreover, mechanisms to improve the network performance in IoT scenarios, which integrate devices with different communication technologies, are introduced. The studies conducted to assess the performance of the proposed solutions showed the high potential of the proposed solutions. When the approaches presented in this thesis were compared with others available in the literature, they presented very promising results considering the metrics related to the Quality of Service (QoS), network and energy efficiency, and memory usage as well as adding new features to the base protocols. Hence, it is believed that the proposed improvements contribute to the state-of-the-art of routing solutions for IoT networks, increasing the performance and adoption of enhanced protocols.A Internet das Coisas, do inglês Internet of Things (IoT), propõe um paradigma de comunicação disruptivo para possibilitar que dispositivos, que podem ser dotados de comportamentos autónomos ou inteligentes, troquem dados entre eles buscando alcançar um objetivo comum. Os cenários de aplicação do IoT são muito variados e podem abranger desde um simples sistema de iluminação para casa até o controle total de uma linha de produção industrial. Na maioria das instalações IoT, as “coisas” são equipadas com um pequeno dispositivo, responsável por realizar as tarefas de comunicação e processamento de dados, que pode sofrer com severas restrições de hardware e energia. Assim, devido às suas características, a rede de comunicação criada por esses dispositivos é geralmente categorizada como uma Low Power and Lossy Network (LLN). A grande variedade de cenários IoT representam uma questão crucial para as LLNs, que devem oferecer suporte aos diferentes requisitos das aplicações, além de manter níveis de qualidade de serviço, do inglês Quality of Service (QoS), adequados. Baseado neste desafio, os protocolos de encaminhamento constituem um aspecto chave na implementação de cenários IoT. Os protocolos de encaminhamento são responsáveis por criar os caminhos entre os dispositivos e permitir suas interações. Assim, o desempenho e as características da rede são altamente dependentes do comportamento destes protocolos. Adicionalmente, com base no protocolo adotado, o suporte a alguns requisitos específicos das aplicações de IoT podem ou não ser fornecidos. Portanto, estes protocolos devem ser projetados para atender as necessidades das aplicações assim como considerando as limitações do hardware no qual serão executados. Procurando atender às necessidades dos protocolos de encaminhamento em LLNs e, consequentemente, das redes IoT, a Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) desenvolveu e padronizou o IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL). O protocolo, embora seja robusto e ofereça recursos para atender às necessidades de diferentes aplicações, apresenta algumas falhas e fraquezas (principalmente relacionadas com a sua alta complexidade e necessidade de memória) que limitam sua adoção em cenários IoT. Em alternativa ao RPL, o Lightweight On-demand Ad hoc Distance-vector Routing Protocol – Next Generation (LOADng) emergiu como uma solução de encaminhamento menos complexa para as LLNs. Contudo, o preço da simplicidade é pago com a falta de suporte adequado para um conjunto de recursos essenciais necessários em muitos ambientes IoT. Assim, inspirado pelas desafiadoras questões ainda em aberto relacionadas com o encaminhamento em redes IoT, esta tese tem como objetivo estudar e propor contribuições para melhor atender os requisitos de rede em cenários IoT. Uma profunda e abrangente revisão do estado da arte sobre os protocolos de encaminhamento adotados em IoT identificou os pontos fortes e limitações das soluções atuais. Com base nas debilidades encontradas, um conjunto de soluções de melhoria é proposto para superar carências existentes e melhorar o desempenho das redes IoT. As novas soluções são propostas para incluir um suporte confiável e eficiente capaz atender às necessidades das aplicações IoT relacionadas com suporte à mobilidade, heterogeneidade dos dispositivos e diferentes padrões de tráfego. Além disso, são introduzidos mecanismos para melhorar o desempenho da rede em cenários IoT que integram dispositivos com diferentes tecnologias de comunicação. Os vários estudos realizados para mensurar o desempenho das soluções propostas mostraram o grande potencial do conjunto de melhorias introduzidas. Quando comparadas com outras abordagens existentes na literatura, as soluções propostas nesta tese demonstraram um aumento do desempenho consistente para métricas relacionadas a qualidade de serviço, uso de memória, eficiência energética e de rede, além de adicionar novas funcionalidades aos protocolos base. Portanto, acredita-se que as melhorias propostas contribuiem para o avanço do estado da arte em soluções de encaminhamento para redes IoT e aumentar a adoção e utilização dos protocolos estudados

TFUZZY-OF: a new method for routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks load balancing using multi-criteria decision-making

The internet of things (IoT) based on a network layer perspective includes low-power and lossy networks (LLN) that are limited in terms of power consumption, memory, and energy usage. The routing protocol used in these networks is called routing over low-power and lossy networks (RPL). Therefore, the IoT networks include smart objects that need multiple routing for their interconnections which makes traffic load balancing techniques indispensable to RPL routing protocol. In this paper, we propose a method based on fuzzy logic and the technique for the order of prioritization by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) as a well-known multi-criteria decision-making method to solve the load balancing problem by routing metrics composition. For this purpose, a combination of both link and node routing metrics namely hop count, expected transmission count, and received signal strength indicator is used. The results of simulations show that this method can increase the quality of services in terms of packet delivery ratio and average end-to-end delay