MobiRPL: Adaptive, robust, and RSSI-based mobile routing in low power and lossy networks

This paper tackles the mobile routing issues in low-power and lossy networks (LLNs). The IPv6 standard routing protocol for LLNs, termed IPv6 routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (RPL), has mostly been investigated in static LLNs and it has no explicit mechanism to support mobility. In addition, there is no mobile routing protocol that works well in mobile LLNs. Considering the importance of mobility support in many LLN applications, this work designs and implements MobiRPL, an adaptive, robust, and received signal strength indicator (RSSI)-based mobile routing scheme based on the RPL standard. To cope with network dynamics, the MobiRPL design focuses more on maintaining reliable routing topology than on minimizing energy consumption. This design choice significantly improves reliability while maintaining the acceptable energy consumption of mobile LLNs. We implement MobiRPL on Contiki OS, and evaluate its effectiveness extensively through Cooja simulation and testbed experiments. Our results from the testbed show that MobiRPL improves mobile nodes' packet delivery ratio by 11.3% compared to RPL and reduces the energy consumption of mobile nodes by 73.3% compared to the baseline scheme, i.e., the lightweight on-demand ad-hoc distance-vector routing protocol — next generation (LOADng).