Evaluating IPv6 Connectivity for IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth Low Energy

IPv6 is seen as a key building block for the Internet of Things (IoT). In this work, IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocols are evaluated with respect to service ratio, delay, and energy efficiency under IPv6 traffic. While the performance is terms of delay is similar between the two technologies, BLE outperforms 802.15.4 in terms of service ratio and energy efficiency. Header compression increases all performance indicators but requires a shared context to be set up and managed. IPv6 multicast is also investigated in combination with data link layer broadcast and sequential unicast. Finally, the impact of IPv6 connection establishment and maintenance is evaluated. This is particularly relevant for BLE devices using privacy features. It is shown that the procedures for registering IPv6 addresses and updating contexts affect the delay significantly, but only at very low traffic intensity.