Low Power RPL for Internet of Things (IoT)

Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to improve the way we interact with things. IoT envisions the idea of universal connectivity of everything which is defined as the global network of uniquely identifiable and addressable smart things posing the capability to interact and communicate with other smart things. Every smart object consists of a microprocessor, transceiver module, a sensor and power source. Most of the times these systems have to deal with low power and lossy networks (LLNs), where nodes have limited memory, processing capability and power. However, stringent Quality of Service (QoS) is mandatory which is challenging to provide as the sensors are interconnected using lossy links. A routing protocol is needed as these devices can be scattered in an unplanned manner. For the unanticipated characteristics of LLNs, Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) developed and standardized the Routing Protocol for LLNs (RPL) which is an IPv6 based routing protocol. RPL builds a tree-like topology which is based on few network metric optimization process using different Objective Functions (OF) to fulfill desired routing process. Our aim is to develop a new OF using the combination of Expected Transmission (ETX) and Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) values to select best parent as well as routing path and to perform Transmission Power Control (TCP) to send packets to that