On reliable and secure RPL (routing protocol low-power and lossy networks) based monitoring and surveillance in oil and gas fields

Different efforts have been made to specify protocols and algorithms for the successful operation of the Internet of things Networks including, for instance, the Low Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) and Linear Sensor Networks (LSNs). Into such efforts, IETF, the Internet Engineering Task Force, created a working group named, ROLL, to investigate the requirement of such networks and devising more efficient solutions. The effort of this group has resulted in the specification of the IPv6 Routing Protocol for LLNs (RPL), which was standardized in 2012. However, since the introduction of RPL, several studies have reported that it suffers from various limitations and weaknesses including scalability, slow convergence, unfairness of load distribution, inefficiency of bidirectional communication and security, among many others. For instance, a serious problem is RPL’s under-specification of DAO messages which may result in conflict and inefficient implementations leading to a poor performance and scalability issues. Furthermore, RPL has been found to suffer from several security issues including, for instance, the DAO flooding attack, in which the attacker floods the network with control messages aiming to exhaust network resources. Another fundamental issue is related to the scarcity of the studies that investigate RPL suitability for Linear Sensor Networks (LSN) and devising solution in the lieu of that.Motivated by these observations, the publications within this thesis aim to tackle some of the key gaps of the RPL by introducing more efficient and secure routing solutions in consideration of the specific requirements of LLNs in general and LSNs as a special case. To this end, the first publication proposes an enhanced version of RPL called Enhanced-RPL aimed at mitigating the memory overflow and the under-specification of the of DAOs messages. Enhanced-RPL has shown significant reduction in control messages overhead by up to 64% while maintaining comparable reliability to RPL. The second publication introduces a new technique to address the DAO attack of RPL which has been shown to be effective in mitigating the attack reducing the DAO overhead and latency by up to 205% and 181% respectively as well as increasing the PDR by up to 6% latency. The third and fourth publications focus on analysing the optimal placement of nodes and sink movement pattern (fixed or mobile) that RPL should adopt in LSNs. It was concluded based on the results obtained that RPL should opt for fixed sinks with 10 m distance between deployed nodes

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%