Effect of radio link and network layer parameters on performance of Zolertia Z1 motes based 6LoWPAN

Unbeknownst the characteristics of radio link parameters and their effect on network performance it becomes difficult to work around the various constraints in low power lossy networks also known as IPv6 over Low Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN). Based on thorough experiments carried out on the test bed of real zolertia Z1 motes enabled with contiki operating system, the effect of link and network layer parameters on 6LoWPAN performance is analyzed. The performance of 6LoWPAN depends firstly on link metrics viz; radio signal strength indication (RSSI), packet reception ratio (PRR), packet error rate (PER) and link quality indication (LQI). Secondly on node metrics viz; energy consumption, memory occupancy and thirdly on network level metric viz; routing protocol convergence time, control overhead. It is found that the RPL protocol convergence time depends on both the link metrics RSSI and the channel check rate (CCR). Most importantly the node metric; energy consumption is found to be inversely proportional to the link metric RSSI. It is observed that the energy consumption in radio listening state is higher on an average by the factors of 11.64 and 24.66 than in radio transmitting and processing states respectively.