Load Balancing Under Heavy Traffic in RPL Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks
TL;DR: This article proposes a simple yet effective queue utilization based RPL (QU-RPL) that achieves load balancing and significantly improves the end-to-end packet delivery performance compared to the standard RPL.
Abstract: RPL is an IPv6 routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (LLNs) designed to meet the requirements of a wide range of LLN applications including smart grid AMIs, industrial and environmental monitoring, and wireless sensor networks. RPL allows bi-directional end-to-end IPv6 communication on resource constrained LLN devices, leading to the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) with thousands and millions of devices interconnected through multihop mesh networks. In this article, we investigate the load balancing and congestion problem of RPL. Specifically, we show that most of the packet losses under heavy traffic are due to congestion, and a serious load balancing problem appears in RPL in terms of routing parent selection. To overcome this problem, this article proposes a simple yet effective queue utilization based RPL ( QU-RPL ) that achieves load balancing and significantly improves the end-to-end packet delivery performance compared to the standard RPL. QU-RPL is designed for each node to select its parent node considering the queue utilization of its neighbor nodes as well as their hop distances to an LLN border router (LBR). Owing to its load balancing capability, QU-RPL is very effective in lowering queue losses and increasing the packet delivery ratio. We implement QU-RPL on a low-power embedded platform, and verify all of our findings through experimental measurements on a real testbed of a multihop LLN over IEEE 802.15.4. We present the impact of each design element of QU-RPL on performance in detail, and also show that QU-RPL reduces the queue loss by up to 84 percent and improves the packet delivery ratio by up to 147 percent compared to the standard RPL.
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TL;DR: This paper reviewed over 97 RPL-related academic research papers published by major academic publishers and presented a topic-oriented survey for these research efforts, finding that only 40.2% of the papers evaluate RPL through experiments using implementations on real embedded devices.
Abstract: RPL is the IPv6 routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks, standardized by IETF in 2012 as RFC6550. Specifically, RPL is designed to be a simple and inter-operable networking protocol for resource-constrained devices in industrial, home, and urban environments, intended to support the vision of the Internet of Things with thousands of devices interconnected through multihop mesh networks. More than four-years have passed since the standardization of RPL, and we believe that it is time to examine and understand its current state. In this paper, we review the history of research efforts in RPL; what aspects have been (and have not been) investigated and evaluated, how they have been studied, what was (and was not) implemented, and what remains for future investigation. We reviewed over 97 RPL-related academic research papers published by major academic publishers and present a topic-oriented survey for these research efforts. Our survey shows that only 40.2% of the papers evaluate RPL through experiments using implementations on real embedded devices, ContikiOS and TinyOS are the two most popular implementations (92.3%), and TelosB was the most frequently used hardware platform (69%) on testbeds that have average and median size of 49.4 and 30.5 nodes, respectively. Furthermore, unfortunately, despite it being approximately four years since its initial standardization, we are yet to see wide adoption of RPL as part of real-world systems and applications. We present our observations on the reasons behind this and suggest directions on which RPL should evolve.
221 citations
Cites methods from "Load Balancing Under Heavy Traffic ..."
...They provided more detailed information of QU-RPL’s behavior with additional experiments on another larger testbed in [65]....
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Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors make an exhaustive review of the literature on wireless network design and optimization for wireless networked control systems (WNCS) and discuss the critical interactive variables including sampling period, message delay, message dropout and network energy consumption.
Abstract: Wireless networked control systems (WNCS) are composed of spatially distributed sensors, actuators, and con- trollers communicating through wireless networks instead of conventional point-to-point wired connections. Due to their main benefits in the reduction of deployment and maintenance costs, large flexibility and possible enhancement of safety, WNCS are becoming a fundamental infrastructure technology for critical control systems in automotive electrical systems, avionics control systems, building management systems, and industrial automation systems. The main challenge in WNCS is to jointly design the communication and control systems considering their tight interaction to improve the control performance and the network lifetime. In this survey, we make an exhaustive review of the literature on wireless network design and optimization for WNCS. First, we discuss what we call the critical interactive variables including sampling period, message delay, message dropout, and network energy consumption. The mutual effects of these communication and control variables motivate their joint tuning. We discuss the effect of controllable wireless network parameters at all layers of the communication protocols on the probability distribution of these interactive variables. We also review the current wireless network standardization for WNCS and their corresponding methodology for adapting the network parameters. Moreover, we discuss the analysis and design of control systems taking into account the effect of the interactive variables on the control system performance. Finally, we present the state-of-the-art wireless network design and optimization for WNCS, while highlighting the tradeoff between the achievable performance and complexity of various approaches. We conclude the survey by highlighting major research issues and identifying future research directions.
164 citations
TL;DR: The resource management mechanisms of the state-of-the-art IoT OSs, such as Contiki, TinyOS, and FreeRTOS, are investigated and the different dimensions of their resource management approaches are studied and their advantages and limitations are highlighted.
Abstract: Recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) concept has attracted a lot of attention due to its capability to translate our physical world into a digital cyber world with meaningful information. The IoT devices are smaller in size, sheer in number, contain less memory, use less energy, and have more computational capabilities. These scarce resources for IoT devices are powered by small operating systems (OSs) that are specially designed to support the IoT devices’ diverse applications and operational requirements. These IoT OSs are responsible for managing the constrained resources of IoT devices efficiently and in a timely manner. In this paper, discussions on IoT devices and OS resource management are provided. In detail, the resource management mechanisms of the state-of-the-art IoT OSs, such as Contiki, TinyOS, and FreeRTOS, are investigated. The different dimensions of their resource management approaches (including process management, memory management, energy management, communication management, and file management) are studied, and their advantages and limitations are highlighted.
155 citations
Cites background from "Load Balancing Under Heavy Traffic ..."
...Load balancing under heavy traffic in RPL is carried out efficiently by queue utilization (QU) [117]....
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TL;DR: A discussion of the main aspects of RPL and the advantages and disadvantages of using it in different IoT applications, and a comparison of related RPL-based protocols in terms of energy efficiency, reliability, flexibility, robustness, and security.
Abstract: In the last few years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has proved to be an interesting and promising paradigm that aims to contribute to countless applications by connecting more physical “things” to the Internet. Although it emerged as a major enabler for many next-generation applications, it also introduced new challenges to already saturated networks. The IoT is already coming to life especially in healthcare and smart environment applications adding a large number of low-powered sensors and actuators to improve lifestyle and introduce new services to the community. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) developed RPL as the routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (LLNs) and standardized it in RFC6550 in 2012. RPL quickly gained interest, and many research papers were introduced to evaluate and improve its performance in different applications. In this paper, we present a discussion of the main aspects of RPL and the advantages and disadvantages of using it in different IoT applications. We also review the available research related to RPL in a systematic manner based on the enhancement area and the service type. In addition to that, we compare related RPL-based protocols in terms of energy efficiency, reliability, flexibility, robustness, and security. Finally, we present our conclusions and discuss the possible future directions of RPL and its applicability in the Internet of the future.
138 citations
Cites methods from "Load Balancing Under Heavy Traffic ..."
...In [90], [91] the authors follow a load balancing approach, they use a queue utilization scheme where nodes send congestion information using DIO messages....
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TL;DR: An energy- and congestion-aware routing metric for smart meter networks to be deployed in smart cities is proposed that considers the residual energy and queue utilization of neighboring nodes and will enhance network lifetime.
Abstract: Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is becoming a vital part of utility distribution networks, allowing the development of smart cities. AMI consists of smart electric, gas, and water meters, and the devices are very limited in terms of battery, processing power, and memory. The deployment and operational needs of energy-constrained network infrastructures in smart water and gas metering systems require the use of routing mechanisms that consider energy consumption, minimize energy use, and prolong network lifetime. An efficient routing metric is needed for energy-constrained devices. In this paper, we propose an energy- and congestion-aware routing metric for smart meter networks to be deployed in smart cities. The proposed metric is an adaptive parent node selection mechanism that considers the residual energy and queue utilization of neighboring nodes. Minimizing power consumption will enhance network lifetime. The proposed scheme was evaluated with the Cooja Simulator 3.0 using random and grid topology. The simulation results show greater network performance in terms of average power consumption and packet delivery ratio.
102 citations
Cites background or methods from "Load Balancing Under Heavy Traffic ..."
...QU factor of each node k can be defined as follows [15]:...
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...[15] explained that the QU of parent node Q (pk) cannot properly reflect traffic congestion....
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...Grounded: It is a flag and is set when the root of the DODAG is connected to the public Internet....
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...Therefore, the authors exploitedQk,max, which is the maximumQU among all parent candidates recently selected by node k , and is defined as follows [15]:...
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...In recent years, several routing protocols have been proposed for this network category [8]; however, the most mature and commercially viable solution is the routing protocol for LLN (RPL) [9], with standardization completed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in March 2012....
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References
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01 Mar 2012
TL;DR: This document specifies the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL), which provides a mechanism whereby multipoint-to-point traffic from devices inside the LLN towards a central control point as well as point- to- multipoint traffic from the central control points to the devices insideThe LLN are supported.
Abstract: Low-Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) are a class of network in which
both the routers and their interconnect are constrained. LLN routers
typically operate with constraints on processing power, memory, and
energy (battery power). Their interconnects are characterized by high
loss rates, low data rates, and instability. LLNs are comprised of
anything from a few dozen to thousands of routers. Supported traffic
flows include point-to-point (between devices inside the LLN), point-
to-multipoint (from a central control point to a subset of devices
inside the LLN), and multipoint-to-point (from devices inside the LLN
towards a central control point). This document specifies the IPv6
Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL), which
provides a mechanism whereby multipoint-to-point traffic from devices
inside the LLN towards a central control point as well as point-to-
multipoint traffic from the central control point to the devices
inside the LLN are supported. Support for point-to-point traffic is
also available. [STANDARDS-TRACK]
2,551 citations
"Load Balancing Under Heavy Traffic ..." refers background or methods in this paper
...To overcome this problem, this article proposes a simple yet effective queue utilization basedRPL (QU-RPL) that achieves load balancing and significantly improves the end-to-end packet delivery performance compared to the standard RPL.QU-RPL is designed for each node to select its parent node…...
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...In this section we describe TinyRPL, i.e., the default RPL implementation in TinyOS 2.1.2 (latest), which implements the RPL standard [9] with OF0 along with the hop count metric for rank calculation and the ETX for parent selection....
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...LOW-POWER and lossy networks (LLNs) comprised ofthousands of embedded networking devices can be used in a variety of applications including smart grid automated metering infrastructures (AMIs) [2], [3], industrial monitoring [4], [5], and wireless sensor networks [6], [7], [8]....
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24 Apr 2005
TL;DR: Telos is the latest in a line of motes developed by UC Berkeley to enable wireless sensor network (WSN) research, a new mote design built from scratch based on experiences with previous mote generations, with three major goals to enable experimentation: minimal power consumption, easy to use, and increased software and hardware robustness.
Abstract: We present Telos, an ultra low power wireless sensor module ("mote") for research and experimentation. Telos is the latest in a line of motes developed by UC Berkeley to enable wireless sensor network (WSN) research. It is a new mote design built from scratch based on experiences with previous mote generations. Telos' new design consists of three major goals to enable experimentation: minimal power consumption, easy to use, and increased software and hardware robustness. We discuss how hardware components are selected and integrated in order to achieve these goals. Using a Texas Instruments MSP430 microcontroller, Chipcon IEEE 802.15.4-compliant radio, and USB, Telos' power profile is almost one-tenth the consumption of previous mote platforms while providing greater performance and throughput. It eliminates programming and support boards, while enabling experimentation with WSNs in both lab, testbed, and deployment settings.
2,115 citations
"Load Balancing Under Heavy Traffic ..." refers methods in this paper
...Each LLN node is a TelosB clone device [35] with an MSP430 microcontroller and a CC2420 radio, and uses a transmission power of 13dBm with an antenna gain of 5dB which forms a 5 6-hop network in our testbed....
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TL;DR: The aim is to provide a contemporary look at the current state of the art in IWSNs and discuss the still-open research issues in this field and to make the decision-making process more effective and direct.
Abstract: In today's competitive industry marketplace, the companies face growing demands to improve process efficiencies, comply with environmental regulations, and meet corporate financial objectives. Given the increasing age of many industrial systems and the dynamic industrial manufacturing market, intelligent and low-cost industrial automation systems are required to improve the productivity and efficiency of such systems. The collaborative nature of industrial wireless sensor networks (IWSNs) brings several advantages over traditional wired industrial monitoring and control systems, including self-organization, rapid deployment, flexibility, and inherent intelligent-processing capability. In this regard, IWSN plays a vital role in creating a highly reliable and self-healing industrial system that rapidly responds to real-time events with appropriate actions. In this paper, first, technical challenges and design principles are introduced in terms of hardware development, system architectures and protocols, and software development. Specifically, radio technologies, energy-harvesting techniques, and cross-layer design for IWSNs have been discussed. In addition, IWSN standards are presented for the system owners, who plan to utilize new IWSN technologies for industrial automation applications. In this paper, our aim is to provide a contemporary look at the current state of the art in IWSNs and discuss the still-open research issues in this field and, hence, to make the decision-making process more effective and direct.
1,595 citations
"Load Balancing Under Heavy Traffic ..." refers background in this paper
...RPL allows bidirectional end-to-end IPv6 communication on resource constrained LLN devices, leading to the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) with thousands andmillions of devices interconnected throughmultihopmesh networks....
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01 Sep 2007
TL;DR: This document describes the frame format for transmission of IPv6 packets and the method of forming IPv6 link-local addresses and statelessly autoconfigured addresses on IEEE 802.15.4 networks.
Abstract: This document describes the frame format for transmission of IPv6
packets and the method of forming IPv6 link-local addresses and
statelessly autoconfigured addresses on IEEE 802.15.4 networks.
Additional specifications include a simple header compression scheme
using shared context and provisions for packet delivery in IEEE
802.15.4 meshes. [STANDARDS-TRACK]
1,400 citations
"Load Balancing Under Heavy Traffic ..." refers methods in this paper
...To overcome this problem, this article proposes a simple yet effective queue utilization basedRPL (QU-RPL) that achieves load balancing and significantly improves the end-to-end packet delivery performance compared to the standard RPL.QU-RPL is designed for each node to select its parent node…...
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Proceedings Article•
29 Mar 2004TL;DR: Trickle as mentioned in this paper uses a "polite gossip" policy, where motes periodically broadcast a code summary to local neighbors but stay quiet if they have recently heard a summary identical to theirs.
Abstract: We present Trickle, an algorithm for propagating and maintaining code updates in wireless sensor networks. Borrowing techniques from the epidemic/gossip, scalable multicast, and wireless broadcast literature, Trickle uses a "polite gossip" policy, where motes periodically broadcast a code summary to local neighbors but stay quiet if they have recently heard a summary identical to theirs. When a mote hears an older summary than its own, it broadcasts an update. Instead of flooding a network with packets, the algorithm controls the send rate so each mote hears a small trickle of packets, just enough to stay up to date. We show that with this simple mechanism, Trickle can scale to thousand-fold changes in network density, propagate new code in the order of seconds, and impose a maintenance cost on the order of a few sends an hour.
929 citations