Trust-based RPL for the Internet of Things

The Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) is the standardized routing protocol for constrained environments such as 6LoWPAN networks, and is considered as the routing protocol of the Internet of Things (IoT). However, this protocol is subject to several internal and external attacks. In fact, RPL is facing many issues. Among these issues, trust management is a real challenge when deploying RPL. In this paper, we highlight and discuss the different issues of trust management in RPL. We consider that using only TPM (Trust Platform Module) to ensure trustworthiness between nodes is not sufficient. Indeed, an internal infected or selfish node could participate in constructing RPL topology. To overcome this issue, we propose to strengthen RPL by adding a new trustworthiness metric during RPL construction and maintenance. This metric represents the level of trust for each node in the network, and is calculated using selfishness, energy, and honesty components. It allows a node to decide whether or not to trust the other nodes during the construction of the topology.