IETF standardization in the field of the Internet of Things (IoT): a survey

Smart embedded objects will become an important part of what is called the Internet of Things. However, the integration of embedded devices into the Internet introduces several challenges, since many of the existing Internet technologies and protocols were not designed for this class of devices. In the past few years, there have been many efforts to enable the extension of Internet technologies to constrained devices. Initially, this resulted in proprietary protocols and architectures. Later, the integration of constrained devices into the Internet was embraced by IETF, moving towards standardized IP-based protocols. In this paper, we will briefly review the history of integrating constrained devices into the Internet, followed by an extensive overview of IETF standardization work in the 6LoWPAN, ROLL and CoRE working groups. This is complemented with a broad overview of related research results that illustrate how this work can be extended or used to tackle other problems and with a discussion on open issues and challenges. As such the aim of this paper is twofold: apart from giving readers solid insights in IETF standardization work on the Internet of Things, it also aims to encourage readers to further explore the world of Internet-connected objects, pointing to future research opportunities

IETF standardization in the field of the internet of things (IoT): a survey

Smart embedded objects will become an important part of what is called the Internet of Things. However, the integration of embedded devices into the Internet introduces several challenges, since many of the existing Internet technologies and protocols were not designed for this class of devices. In the past few years, there have been many efforts to enable the extension of Internet technologies to constrained devices. Initially, this resulted in proprietary protocols and architectures. Later, the integration of constrained devices into the Internet was embraced by IETF, moving towards standardized IP-based protocols. In this paper, we will briefly review the history of integrating constrained devices into the Internet, followed by an extensive overview of IETF standardization work in the 6LoWPAN, ROLL and CoRE working groups. This is complemented with a broad overview of related research results that illustrate how this work can be extended or used to tackle other problems and with a discussion on open issues and challenges. As such the aim of this paper is twofold: apart from giving readers solid insights in IETF standardization work on the Internet of Things, it also aims to encourage readers to further explore the world of Internet-connected objects, pointing to future research opportunities.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no 258885 (SPITFIRE project), from the iMinds ICON projects GreenWeCan and O’CareCloudS, a FWO postdoc grant for Eli De Poorter and a VLIR PhD scholarship to Isam Ishaq

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

Fine-grained management of CoAP interactions with constrained IoT devices

As open standards for the Internet of Things gain traction, the current Intranet of Things will evolve to a truly open Internet of Things, where constrained devices are first class citizens of the public Internet. However, the large amount of control over constrained networks offered by today's vertically integrated platforms, becomes even more important in an open IoT considering its promise of direct end-to-end interactions with constrained devices. In this paper a set of challenges is identified for controlling interactions with constrained networks that arise due to their constrained nature and their integration with the public Internet. Furthermore, a number of solutions are presented for overcoming these challenges by means of an intercepting intermediary at the edge of the constrained network

Secure communication in IP-based wireless sensor network via a trusted gateway

As the IP-integration of wireless sensor networks enables end-to-end interactions, solutions to appropriately secure these interactions with hosts on the Internet are necessary. At the same time, burdening wireless sensors with heavy security protocols should be avoided. While Datagram TLS (DTLS) strikes a good balance between these requirements, it entails a high cost for setting up communication sessions. Furthermore, not all types of communication have the same security requirements: e.g. some interactions might only require authorization and do not need confidentiality. In this paper we propose and evaluate an approach that relies on a trusted gateway to mitigate the high cost of the DTLS handshake in the WSN and to provide the flexibility necessary to support a variety of security requirements. The evaluation shows that our approach leads to considerable energy savings and latency reduction when compared to a standard DTLS use case, while requiring no changes to the end hosts themselves

RPL routing protocol performance under sinkhole and selective forwarding attack: experimental and simulated evaluation

To make possible dream of connecting 30 billion smart devices assessable from anywhere, anytime and to fuel the engine growth of Internet of things (IoT) both in terms of physical and virtual things, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) came up with a concept of 6LoWPAN possessing characteristics like low power, bandwidth and cost. To bridge the routing gap and to collaborate between low power private area network and the outside world, IETF ROLL group proposed IPv6 based lightweight standard RPL (Routing protocol for low power and lossy networks). Due to large chunks of random data generated on daily basis security either externally or internally always remain bigger threat which may lead to devastation and eventually degrades the quality of service parameters affecting network resources. This paper evaluates and compare the effect of internal attacks like sinkhole and selective forwarding attacks on routing protocol for low power and lossy network topology. Widely known IoT operating system Contiki and Cooja as the simulator are used to analyse different consequences on low power and lossy network

Using SCHC for an optimized protocol stack in multimodal LPWAN solutions

Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs) are formed out of cheap, small, interconnected devices which operate in the sub-GHz domain. The last couple of years, many communication technologies arose in this domain, each with its own characteristics. In order to satisfy more diverse requirements, devices are now equipped with multiple LPWAN radio technologies, which requires the use of a unified protocol stack independent of the underlying LPWAN technology. With its 2128 addresses available and its ability to operate over different link layer technologies, the IPv6 protocol stack would be the ideal candidate. However, many LPWAN configurations do not allow standardized IP/UDP communication, sometimes acquiring more header overhead than there is room for the actual payload. Recently, a new initiative to directly connect constrained devices over IP was initiated by the LPWAN working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). This work resulted in the Static Context Header Compression or SCHC mechanism. This header compression mechanism is able to compress the overhead of these internet protocols up to 95%. In order to comply with the IPv6 Maximum Transfer Unit (MTU) of 1280 bytes, a fragmentation mechanism is also included. In this work, we validate the benefits of using SCHC for multimodal LPWAN solutions and show its implementation feasibility on such constrained devices

IoT interoperability:a hub-based approach

Interoperability in the Internet of Things is critical for emerging services and applications. In this paper we advocate the use of IoT ‘hubs’ to aggregate things using web protocols, and suggest a staged approach to interoperability. In the context of a UK government funded project involving 8 IoT projects to address cross-domain IoT interoperability, we introduce the HyperCat IoT catalogue specification. We then describe the tools and techniques we developed to adapt an existing data portal and IoT platform to this specification, and provide an IoT hub focused on the highways industry called ‘Smart Streets’. Based on our experience developing this large scale IoT hub, we outline lessons learned which we hope will contribute to ongoing efforts to create an interoperable global IoT ecosystem