Implementation of RPL in OMNeT++

TL;DR

This paper presents an implementation of the RPL routing protocol in the OMNeT++ simulator, facilitating research on IoT networks, especially Low-Power and Lossy Networks, with publicly available code for the community.

Contribution

The paper provides a new, accessible implementation of RPL in OMNeT++, aiding researchers in prototyping and testing IoT routing solutions.

Findings

Implementation is easy to use for initial prototyping

Code is publicly available for research community

Facilitates evaluation of RPL in IoT simulations

Abstract

The growth and evolution of Internet of Things (IoT) is now of paramount importance for next-generation networks, including the upcoming 6G. In particular, there is a set of constrained IoT nodes that comprise the Low-Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs), which have very particular requirements. The current standard for routing in those networks is RPL, which was defined less than a decade ago and still needs improvements in terms of scalability or integration with other networks. Many researchers currently need an implementation of RPL to evaluate their works and, for that reason, among others, we implemented it in the OMNeT++ simulator. The results of this implementation show that is an easy way to check prototypes in their very initial develop phases, and its code is publicly available for the research community.