A Novel Approach for RPL Assessment Based on the Objective Function and Trickle Optimizations

Abstract

The ROLL working group proposed the RPL (IPv6 routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks) to respond to the requirements of low-power and lossy networks (LLNs). In this paper, we propose a new approach to assess the RPL performances based on its main components, namely, the objective function (OF) and the trickle algorithm. To this end, we compare between the RPL-EC (RPL based combined ETX and energy consumption) and the RPL-FL (RPL based on the flexible trickle algorithm). This paper compares the two implementations to assess the weight of each proposed improvement against the standard RPL. The results show that RPL performances are greatly influenced by the change of both the objective function and trickle algorithm. RPL-FL provides best values in terms of overhead, packet delivery ratio (PDR), and energy consumption, while RPL-EC acts better with the convergence time and the network lifetime compared to the standard RPL.