IPv6 Label Switching on IEEE 802.15.4

Driven by the idea to converge to the Internet of things, we searched within the course of a FP6-project for a suitable mechanism to transport IP packets on ad-hoc wireless personal area networks (WPANs). Prior work was already done and so we decided to start with RFC4944, which was probably the best working solutions for this problem. But since the design of RFC4944 was only targeted to a point-to-point transport of IPv6 packets via IEEE 802.15.4, we missed routing- and power-management capabilities. Therefore, we reassessed RFC4944 and as a result, this paper describes an rdquointuitive approachrdquo to transport IPv6-packet on Zigbee-based WPANs. The basic idea of the proposed solution is the sole usage of inherent IPv6-mechanisms (without the help of additional container or frames) and the usage of existing routing- and fragmentation- capabilities. In this paper we describe an IPv6-based WPAN-implementation, which can keep up with the small packet overheat of RFC4944, and which was extended by routing and power management capabilities. Additionally, a mechanism was added to replace the rdquoexpensiverdquo packet forwarding mechanism by a fast and efficient label-switching technique. This mechanisms can help to reduce the switching table size but also the size of the IP packet headers.