MHCL: IPv6 Multihop Host Configuration for Low-Power Wireless Networks

TL;DR

MHCL introduces a hierarchical IPv6 address allocation method for low-power wireless networks, enabling efficient top-down communication with minimal memory and message overhead, improving upon traditional cycle-free routing protocols.

Contribution

The paper presents MHCL, a novel hierarchical address allocation scheme that enhances top-down communication in low-power wireless networks while maintaining low memory and message overhead.

Findings

Significantly improves top-down message delivery in RPL

Uses constant memory regardless of network size

Efficient setup time and control message usage

Abstract

Standard routing protocols for Low power and Lossy Networks are typically designed to optimize bottom-up data flows, by maintaining a cycle-free network topology. The advantage of such topologies is low memory footprint to store routing information (only the parent's address needs to me known by each node). The disadvantage is that other communication patterns, like top-down and bidirectional data flows, are not easily implemented. In this work we propose MHCL: IPv6 Multihop Host Configuration for Low-Power Wireless Networks. MHCL employs hierarchical address allocation that explores cycle-free network topologies and aims to enable top-down data communication with low message overhead and memory footprint. We evaluated the performance of MHCL both analytically and through simulations. We implemented MHCL as a subroutine of RPL protocol on Contiki OS and showed that it significantly improves top-down message delivery in RPL, while using a constant amount of memory (i.e., independent of network size) and being efficient in terms of setup time and number of control messages.