Importance of Trickle Algorithm in IoT

Routing protocol for low power and lossy networks (RPL) is introduced to hide and overcome the routing problems in wireless sensor networks (WSIS's). In WSIS's, sensor nodes have very limited energy and the wireless link may get fail due to changing environmental conditions. RPL uses destination oriented acyclic graph for the purpose of routing in WSIS's using objective function which caters for a constraints metric. The major element of RPL is the trickle algorithm which is used to reduce the overhead of control messages by separating the total communication time into different intervals. The trickle algorithm increases the transmission of the control packets when an irregularity is observed in the network. By default it decreases transmission rate of control traffic by growing its window size. In this paper we present a study of RPL, objective function, and the role of trickle algorithm in IoT traffic. Future research directions have been identified that would enable us to use the trickle algorithm in an optimal manner.