Integrating Trickle Timing in Software Defined WSNs for Energy Efficiency

Several routing mechanisms for the Internet of Things (IoT) applications has been proposed by research community. RPL (IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks), an IP-based distributed routing paradigm is considered as one standard developed by IETF. More recently, SDN-WISE protocol with centralized routing solution based on Software Defined Networking (SDN), is introduced. SDN-WISE is a stateful Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) paradigm that minimize the complexity of WSNs by reducing the number of messages exchanged. In SDN-WISE, routing polices are defined by a controller which is a software that can be anywhere in the network. In this paper, we develop a new mechanism for SDN-WISE, called Trickle timer, in order to optimize the network performance. Trickle timer allows sensor nodes in a wireless network to exchange few packets per hour when network’s state remains stable. Results show that SDN-WISE protocol with Trickle timer consumes very few energy, compared to the original SDN-WISE protocol, and has better performance in term of radio duty cycle, compared to RPL.