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Understanding Wireless Routing For IoT

Networks
Jan. 24, 2014
The possibility of using IP-based networks could greatly reduce the energy and
costs associated with wireless IoT communication, which would otherwise need
expensive mobile-tower connectivity and GSM/EDGE-based communication.
Ronak Sutaria
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The routing of data from source to sink is an integral part of any large-scale wireless
sensing and Internet of Things (IoT) solution. Unplugged and/or mobile embedded Focus On: Timing
devices used in such low-powered and lossy network (LLN) applications are always
severely constrained in terms of available power. Therefore, energy-efficient routing of
data becomes critical to any long-term sustainable solution. TE CONNECTIVITY
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Related Articles The low-powered embedded devices in such applications do SPONSORED

not work in isolation and often are part of a larger wireless
Understanding Optimizing power
network, usually involving hundreds or thousands of similar efficiency and
The Internet Of density in powe…
other devices (or field nodes). These field nodes may enter or
Things
leave the network at arbitrary times. The wireless routing
Understanding Reduce System
solution, then, should be highly energy-efficient, scalable, and Design Time and
The Protocols
autonomous. Cost with Flexib…
Behind The
Internet Of Things Low-powered and lossy networks (LLNs) typically consist of How Wi-SUN®︎
Looking Forwards sensors, actuators, and routers that communicate wirelessly FAN improves
connected…
And Backwards with each other. Unlike sensors and actuators, though, routers
On The Internet generally do not suffer from (long-term) resource constraints.
Of Things Routers that connect LLNs to the wider Internet infrastructure
are known as LLN border routers (LBRs).

Traffic patterns and data flow within an LLN are highly directional. The patterns can be
defined as multipoint-to-point traffic (MP2P), point-to-multipoint traffic (P2MP), or
point-to-point traffic (P2P). In MP2P traffic, for example, sensed information from
multiple sensing nodes is routed to an Internet application via an LBR. P2MP traffic is
observed when a query request is made from the Internet (outside the LLN) and routed
via the LBRs and LLN routers to multiple field nodes. P2P traffic occurs when control
information needs to be sent to a specific actuator or alert information is received from a
specific sensor.

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The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has created working groups (WGs) to better
understand the energy-efficient routing protocol requirements for application scenarios
like urban/city-wide networks (RFC 5548), building automation/management systems
(RFC 5867), industrial automation systems (RFC 5673), and home automation (RFC
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Urban networked applications like these represent a special type of LLNs with their
unique set of wireless routing requirements. The Real Time Rome project used
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aggregated people density data from mobile telecom operators and GPS location data of
public buses communicated via cell tower connectivity.

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Building a sustainable solution that will allow data collection, aggregation, and display,
though, would require implementing a low-powered mesh network that can route data
among devices that are wirelessly connected and powered using low-energy sources. The
RFC documents describe the key functionality and routing requirements for urban LLNs:

• Deployment of nodes: In a typical urban network deployment, hundreds or thousands

of nodes with pre-programmed functionalities are rolled out. Pre- or post-roll-out, the
network initialization phase may include allocation of addresses, (hierarchical) roles in
the network, synchronization, and determination of schedules. Post-roll-out, in the
resulting topology there may be some node that can connect through multiple
(redundant) paths, while some other nodes may depend on critical links to achieve
connectivity. The routing protocol should account for these factors and support self-
organization and self-configuration at the lowest possible energy cost.

• Association and disassociation of nodes: After the initialization phase, nodes may join
or leave the network at arbitrary times. The routing protocol also should be able to handle
situations where a malfunctioning node may affect or jeopardize the overall routing
efficiency.

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• Regular measurement reporting: Most field nodes are configured to report their
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• Queried measurement reporting: External applications can launch queries on the urban
network. For instance, the level of pollution at a specific point or along a given road may

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need to be known. Round-trip times—i.e., from the launch of a query from a node to the
delivery of the measured data to a node—are important. (The latency is not very
stringent, but it should be smaller than the reporting intervals.)

• Alert reporting: Rarely, the sensing nodes may measure an event that is classified as an
alarm, which is usually when the sensed data is crossing a threshold. Routes for reporting
an alarm need to be unicast (toward an LBR) or multicast (toward multiple LBRs).

• Scalability: The routing protocol must be able to support a field deployment of a few
hundred to tens of thousands of sensor nodes without deteriorating selected performance
parameters below configurable thresholds.

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• Parameter constrained routing: The protocol must be able to advertise node capabilities
(CPU, memory size, available battery level) that it can use for routing decisions. The field
nodes are required to dynamically compute, select, and install different paths toward the
same destination, depending on the nature of the traffic.

• Support of autonomous and alien configuration: Given the large number of nodes,
manually configuring each node is not feasible. The scale and the number of possible
topologies require the network to self-organize and self-configure according to some
prior defined rules and protocols, as well as allow externally triggered configurations.

• Support of highly directed information flows: Urban networks often route sensed data
from the field nodes to Internet-based applications via the LBRs. As the nodes are
spatially dispersed, and as the data gets closer to the LBR, the traffic concentration in the
nodes nearest to the LBR increases, causing load imbalances in those nodes. The routing
protocol must be able to accommodate traffic bursts by dynamically computing and
selecting multiple paths toward the same destination.

• Support of multicast and anycast: The routing protocol must have an addressing TE CONNECTIVITY

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• Network dynamicity: The field nodes may dynamically associate, disassociate, or

disappear from the urban network. The field node dynamics should not impact the
routing in the entire network, so the routing protocol should have an appropriate
updating mechanism to be informed of changes in field node status. The protocol should
use this information to perform the required routing level reorganization and
reconfiguration to maintain overall routing efficiency.

• Latency: The routing protocol should support the ability to route based on different
latency/delay requirements. Urban networks can tolerate delays as long as the
information arrives in a proportionate time compared to the reporting time. (If the time
is every few hours, latency can be a few seconds.)

IPv6-Enabled Wireless Routing Protocol For LLNs (RPL)

The entities and devices involved in building a routing-enabled IoT solution are unable to
maintain state information due to memory and storage constraints. They also can’t
maintain optimizations and overheads in transmitting control information due to energy
and other routing-related constraints.

IoT solutions tend to grow considerably big in scale as well. Hence, the routing protocol
needs to provide routing table scalability and packet loss response. Traditional routing
protocols such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Optimized Link State Routing
(OLSR), and Ad-Hoc On Demand Vector (AODV) were unable to meet the performance
requirements for an IoT solution with such characteristics.

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• Routing state propagation: RPL uses the Trickle algorithm for scalable state
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propagation. The Trickle algorithm allows nodes in a lossy shared medium like low-
power and lossy net works to exchange information in a highly robust, energy efficient,

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simple, and scalable manner. Trickle dynamically adjusts transmission windows so new
information spreads very quickly while only a few messages are transmitted when
information does not change.

• Spatial diversity: Since nodes can dynamically appear and disassociate or disappear,
RPL requires a router to maintain multiple potential parents toward a destination instead
of a single one.

• Expressive link and node metrics: LLNs have significant link-cost variation across
multiple dimensions (e.g., reliability, latency). RPL uses a flexible framework such as
estimated number of transmissions (ETX) for incorporating such dynamic link metrics.

Fundamental Building Blocks Of RPL

At its core, RPL organizes its topology as a directed acyclic graph (DAG) that is
partitioned into one or more destination oriented DAGs (DODAGs), with one DODAG
per sink (see the figure). Each node in a DODAG, which is akin to a routing device in an
IoT solution, has a node rank that defines the node’s position relative to other nodes with
respect to a DODAG root.

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The exact way RPL node rank is computed depends on the DAG’s objective function (OF).
An OF defines how routing metrics, optimization objectives, and related functions are
used to compute rank. In essence, the OF dictates the DODAG formation. The RPL
topology is built using control messages that are transmitted as ICMPv6 messages. The
three key RPL control messages are:

• DODAG information solicitation (DIS): The DIS solicits a DODAG information object
(DIO) from an RPL node.

• DODAG information object (DIO): The DIO carries information that allows a node to
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discover a RPL Instance, learn its configuration parameters, select a DODAG parent set,
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• Destination advertisement object (DAO): The DAO is used to propagate destination
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To construct the DODAG topology, nodes may use a DIS message to solicit a DIO, or they
may periodically send link-local multicast DIO messages. Nodes then listen for DIOs and
use their information to join a new DODAG or to maintain an existing DODAG. Based on
information in the DIOs, the node chooses parents that minimize the path cost to the
DODAG root.

Conclusion

A successful implementation of the RPL could enable an IoT solution to meet its stated
objective functions and goals. In the scope of RPL, a typical goal is to construct the
DODAG according to a specific OF and to keep connectivity to a set of hosts. RPL is
specifically optimized for MP2P and P2MP traffic patterns. Nodes are stateless, and the
routing state information stored in each node is minimal. RPL also accounts for both link
and node properties when choosing paths. And, link failures do not trigger a global
network re-optimization.

For a large-scale IoT deployment (involving thousands of nodes and spread over a large
geographical area), when the routing design and implementation minds the various
features, functionalities, and attributes available in the RPL, the IoT solution could get a
battery lifetime of years.3

The possibility of using IP-based networks could greatly reduce the energy and costs
associated with wireless IoT communication, which would otherwise need expensive
mobile-tower connectivity and GSM/EDGE-based communication. Such an RPL
implementation could dramatically alter the rollout of IoT solutions for applications such
as urban sensing networks.

The RPL topology includes a DAG with

multiple roots and no cycles and a
DODAG, or a DAG rooted at a single
destination (no outgoing edges).

References

1. “Connecting Low-Power and Lossy Networks to the Internet,” IETF Standards Update,
JeongGil Ko and Andreas Terzis, Stephen Dawson-Haggerty and David E. Culler,
Jonathan W. Hui, and Philip Levis,
www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~stevedh/pubs/IEEECommMag11Ko.pdf

2. T. Winter (Ed.), P. Thubert (Ed.), and the ROLL Team. RPL: IPv6 Routing Protocol for
Low power and Lossy Networks, Internet Engineering Task Force, RFC6550 (2012), TE CONNECTIVITY

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6550 Warehouse Automation & LED

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3. Tsiftes, Nicolas, Joakim Eriksson, and Adam Dunkels, “Low-power wireless IPv6 Trendpaper: Opportunistic Charging for
routing with ContikiRPL,” Proceedings of the 9th ACM/IEEE International Conference Electric Forklifts
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Ronak Sutaria is the principal researcher at Mindtree Research Labs, whereProduct Guide: Dynamic Series Connectors
he investigates IoT protocols, middleware, and platforms. His current focus is
on data acquisition and data science solutions for smart city and dense urban Powered by:

sustainability initiatives. He has more than 12 years of experience in building large-

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scale Internet applications and online payment security-related technologies. He has

bachelor of engineering and master of science degrees in computer science.

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