73 research outputs found
HARMONIOUS MULTICAST RETRANSMISSION FOR LOW-POWER AND LOSSY NETWORKS FIRMWARE UPGRADING
Techniques are described herein for composing multicast retransmissions harmoniously by prioritizing transmission of new messages and regulating retransmission of old messages. Only the same multicast messages are forwarded simultaneously such that loss due to collision can be significantly reduced. By measuring the intervals of new messages and counting the duplicates, retransmissions are reasonably curbed with awareness of input rate and medium usage. This prevents the “domino effect” on a crowded channel when loss occurs. Moreover, self-silence mechanisms allow regular nodes to release channel resources for critical forwarders. Multicast retransmission is provided with guaranteed delivery rate, which is imperative for firmware upgrading in Low-Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs)
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
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
D-RPL: Overcoming memory limitations in RPL point-to-multipoint routing
RPL, the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks, supports both upward and downward traffic. The latter is fundamental for actuation, for queries, and for any bidirectional protocol such as TCP, yet its support is compromised by memory limitation in the nodes. In RPL storing mode, nodes store routing entries for each destination in their sub-graph, limiting the size of the network, and often leading to unreachable nodes and protocol failures. We propose here D-RPL, a mechanism that overcomes the scalability limitation by mending storing mode forwarding with multicast-based dissemination. Our modification has minimal impact on code size and memory usage. D-RPL is activated only when memory limits are reached, and affects only the portion of the traffic and the segments of the network that have exceeded memory limits. We evaluate our solution using Cooja emulation over different synthetic topologies, showing a six-fold improvement in scalability
Networking Group Content: RESTful Multiparty Access to a Data-centric Web of Things
Content replication to many destinations is a common use case in the Internet
of Things (IoT). The deployment of IP multicast has proven inefficient, though,
due to its lack of layer-2 support by common IoT radio technologies and its
synchronous end-to-end transmission, which is highly susceptible to
interference. Information-centric networking (ICN) introduced hop-wise
multi-party dissemination of cacheable content, which has proven valuable in
particular for low-power lossy networking regimes. Even NDN, however, the most
prominent ICN protocol, suffers from a lack of deployment.
In this paper, we explore how multiparty content distribution in an
information-centric Web of Things (WoT) can be built on CoAP. We augment the
CoAP proxy by request aggregation and response replication functions, which
together with proxy caches enable asynchronous group communication. In a
further step, we integrate content object security with OSCORE into the CoAP
multicast proxy system, which enables ubiquitous caching of certified authentic
content. In our evaluation, we compare NDN with different deployment models of
CoAP, including our data-centric approach in realistic testbed experiments. Our
findings indicate that multiparty content distribution based on CoAP proxies
performs equally well as NDN, while remaining fully compatible with the
established IoT protocol world of CoAP on the Internet
Design and implementation of multicast listener discovery protocol on constrained devices
Para la aplicación y apoyo del uso de IPv6 en 6LoWPANs (Low-power Wireless Personal Area Networks), ha habido numerosas investigaciones y se han desarrollado protocolos y mecanismos estandarizados. Sin embargo para la comunicación multicast en estas redes, el tema esta aún bastante abierto a la investigación. La comunicación multicast permite conectar routers con hosts preseleccionados por grupos. La comunicación multicast es muy beneficiosa para aplicaciones con dispositivos con recursos limitados ya que ahorra energía y ancho de banda. A continuación mostramos posibles ejemplos de estas aplicaciones, la iluminación de un edificio organizada por plantas, una red de sensores de temperatura organizados por áreas y un largo número de aplicaciones basadas en la comunicación de un punto a varios puntos preseleccionados. El grupo de investigación de la universidad de Aalto (Finlandia) llamado MAMMoTH (Massive Scale Machine-to-Machine Service) tiene como uno de sus objetivos construir un protocolo multicast para dispositivos con recursos limitados. Para el desarrollo de este protocolo, es necesario un protocolo de encaminamiento multicast y un protocolo de gestión de grupos multicast. Este último, es el protocolo que he desarrollado como “research assistant” para mi proyecto final de carrera. En este proyecto final de carrera, se ha diseñado, implementado y evaluado el protocolo MLD para dispositivos con recursos limitados. MLD permite a un router IPv6 gestionar grupos multicast. No obstante, el uso de MLD en LoWPANs tiene varios problemas como la definición del area local, el tamaño de los paquete y la complejidad del comportamiento del router. El protocolo ha sido implementado en Contiki, un sistema operativo para desarrollar para el “Internet of Things”. Contiki permite conectar sistemas pequeños de poco coste con poca potencia a Internet. Hemos ampliado la pila TCP/IP de Contiki para respaldar MLD. El protocolo ha sido evaluado y analizado sobre un simulador en diferentes topologías para validar el funcionamiento. Del mismo modo, también se ha verificado que el tamaño del objeto creado no ocupaba más memoria de la disponible en los dispositivos Z1 Zolertia
The Contiki-NG open source operating system for next generation IoT devices
Contiki-NG (Next Generation) is an open source, cross-platform operating system for severely constrained wireless embedded devices. It focuses on dependable (reliable and secure) low-power communications and standardised protocols, such as 6LoWPAN, IPv6, 6TiSCH, RPL, and CoAP. Its primary aims are to (i) facilitate rapid prototyping and evaluation of Internet of Things research ideas, (ii) reduce time-to-market for Internet of Things applications, and (iii) provide an easy-to-use platform for teaching embedded systems-related courses in higher education. Contiki-NG started as a fork of the Contiki OS and retains many of its original features. In this paper, we discuss the motivation behind the creation of Contiki-NG, present the most recent version (v4.7), and highlight the impact of Contiki-NG through specific examples
Pervasive service discovery in low-power and lossy networks
Pervasive Service Discovery (SD) in Low-power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) is expected to play a major role in realising the Internet of Things (IoT) vision. Such a vision aims to expand the current Internet to interconnect billions of miniature smart objects that sense and act on our surroundings in a way that will revolutionise the future. The pervasiveness and heterogeneity of such low-power devices requires robust, automatic, interoperable and scalable deployment and operability solutions. At the same time, the limitations of such constrained devices impose strict challenges regarding complexity, energy consumption, time-efficiency and mobility.
This research contributes new lightweight solutions to facilitate automatic deployment and operability of LLNs. It mainly tackles the aforementioned challenges through the proposition of novel component-based, automatic and efficient SD solutions that ensure extensibility and adaptability to various LLN environments. Building upon such architecture, a first fully-distributed, hybrid pushpull SD solution dubbed EADP (Extensible Adaptable Discovery Protocol) is proposed based on the well-known Trickle algorithm. Motivated by EADPs’ achievements, new methods to optimise Trickle are introduced. Such methods allow Trickle to encompass a wide range of algorithms and extend its usage to new application domains. One of the new applications is concretized in the TrickleSD protocol aiming to build automatic, reliable, scalable, and time-efficient SD. To optimise the energy efficiency of TrickleSD, two mechanisms improving broadcast communication in LLNs are proposed. Finally, interoperable standards-based SD in the IoT is demonstrated, and methods combining zero-configuration operations with infrastructure-based solutions are proposed.
Experimental evaluations of the above contributions reveal that it is possible to achieve automatic, cost-effective, time-efficient, lightweight, and interoperable SD in LLNs. These achievements open novel perspectives for zero-configuration capabilities in the IoT and promise to bring the ‘things’ to all people everywhere
- …