Light-weighted Internet protocol version 6 for low-power wireless personal area networks

This paper proposes an architectural design of light-weight IPv6 (LWIPv6) for low-power wireless personal area networks (LoWPANs). The LoWPAN is a simple and low-cost wireless communication system, which allows wireless connectivity in a variety of applications with requirements of limited power and relaxed throughput. LoWPAN devices conform to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard specified by the IEEE Computer Society. This paper also suggests how to make IP and IPv6 networking benefits in LoWPANs. Consequently, this paper describes systems requirements analysis (SRA) of LoWPANs with regard to the Internet protocol (IP) layer, also proposes a design of the LWIPv6 architecture focused on LoWPAN, and finally simulates IP communications between LoWPAN devices in a viewpoint of performance analysis. The proposed architecture and protocol in LWIPv6 are substantially optimized for the IP stack, such as header compression, simplified neighbor discovery, and reduction of overhead in the Internet control message protocol (ICMP) functionality.