OF-FZ: An Optimized Objective Function for the Ipv6 Routing Protocol for LLNs

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) has seen a lot of traction over the last few years and is expected to play a major role in controlling devices and communication. IoT network involves sensors with constrained memory, limited processing and power capabilities. The process of network formation largely decides the Quality of service in these networks. IPv6 Routing Protocol for LLNs (RPL) is specially designed by the IETF ROLL working group to cater to routing requirements in such networks. In RPL, an Objective function specifies a set of metrics or constraints which can be used as criteria for best parent and path selection, ensuring a faster route to the destination. In our work, we propose a novel objective function OF-FZ, which uses four metrics to make routing decisions. Fuzzy Logic is used to combine the metrics hop count (HC), ETX, delay and node residual energy (RE) to obtain a single decision metric termed as Quality Assurance (QA) score. During routing, a neighbor node having the highest QA score is chosen as the best parent. The proposed Objective Function leads to significant savings in energy consumption (EC) (9% lower), Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) (3% higher), End-to-end Delay (8% lower) as compared to existing OFs. Controlling advertisement messages circulating in the network leads to a significant reduction in control overhead to the tune of 45%. Performance evaluation and deep dive of OF-FZ is done in three configurations: network scalability, increasing packet transmission rates and multi-sink scenarios using Contiki OS and COOJA network simulator.

KEYWORDS:

• IoT
• LLNs
• Routing protocol
• RPL
• Objective function
• Fuzzy logic

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sonia Kuwelkar

Sonia Kuwelkar completed her BE and ME (Microelectronics) degrees from the Electronics and Telecommunication Department of Goa College of Engineering. She is presently pursuing her PhD degree in the domain of Routing protocols for wireless sensor networks. She is currently working as assistant professor in the Department of Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering of Goa College of Engineering, Goa, India. She has teaching experience of more than 15 years. Her areas of interest include VLSI design & technology, FPGAs & hardware description languages wireless sensor networks, routing protocols for LLN’s. She is a life member of IETE and ISTE.

Hassanali Gulamali Virani

Hassanali Gulamali Virani is currently working as professor and head of the Electronics and Telecommunication Department of Goa College of Engineering, Goa, India. He completed his bachelor's degree in electronics & telecommunication engineering from Goa College of Engineering, Goa University in the year 1991. He completed his master's degree in microelectronics from National Institute of Technology, Surathkal, India in 2004. He has PhD degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He has more than 25 years of teaching experience. His areas of research include devices, nanoelectronics, control systems and wireless sensor networks. He has paper publications in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices and several other reputed journals and conferences. He is a fellow member of IETE and ISTE. Email: [email protected]