ERAOF: A new RPL protocol objective function for Internet of Things applications

Since its definition, RPL (the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks) has been emerging as the standard protocol for routing in Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. RPL is a proactive routing protocol that performs the process of route creation based on Objective Functions (OFs). The OFs are responsible for defining rules and constraints to select the best paths considering different routing metrics. In its definition, RPL does not impose the use of a default OF and indicates that an OF should be selected according to the application. Thus, this paper proposes an Energy Efficient and Path Reliability Aware Objective Function (ERAOF) for IoT applications that requires energy efficiency and reliability in data transmission. The ERAOF is based on the composition of energy and link quality routing metrics. Results show that ERAOF is able to improve the network performance when compared to other OFs available in the literature.