Implementation of Neighbor Discovery Protocol as Communication Initiator Between Sensor Nodes and IoT Middleware in 6LoWPAN Networks

Communication between sensor nodes and IoT middleware based on 6LoWPAN offers several advantages. However, there is a challenge on forming communication in 6LoWPAN. Sensor nodes cannot automatically find the existing IoT middleware, and need configuring manually using IP address and prefix-based as used by IoT middleware. Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) suggests the ability to self-configure communication between IoT middleware and sensor nodes using Stateless Address Autoconfiguration (SLAAC) mechanism. Experiments show that the sensor nodes have automatic IP addressing and can discover the middleware's existence and address. The discovery delay is around 1ms with the number of exchanged NDP control message of each node is six. The packet delivery ratio when using CoAP and MQTT protocols are 93% and 100% respectively, and the maximum reachability range is 105m.