Secure parent node selection scheme in route construction to exclude attacking nodes from RPL network

The IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-power and Lossy networks (RPL) is a standard routing protocol to realize the Internet of Things (IoT). Since RPL is a tree-based topology network, an attacking node may falsely claim its rank towards neighbor nodes in order to be chosen as a parent of them and to collect more packets to tamper. In this paper, we propose a secure parent selection scheme so that each child node can select a legitimate node as its parent. In the proposed scheme, each node chooses a parent after excluding the best candidate if multiple parent candidates exist. Our scheme utilizes the fact that an attacking node claims falsely a lower rank than that of a legitimate nodes. We show that attacking nodes have no merits to claim lower ranks than true ones in a secure parent node selection scheme. By the computer simulation, we show that the proposed scheme reduces the total number of child nodes attached to attacking nodes in comparison with the conventional RPL scheme.