Impact of Mobility on Performance of RDC Protocols in IoT Environment

To facilitate the usage of internet protocol IPv6 in IEEE 802.15.4 wireless networks, an adaptation layer 6LoWPAN is sandwiched between network layer and data link layer. In protocol stack of 6LoWPAN, data link layer is supported by two protocols namely MAC and Radio Duty Cycle (RDC) protocols. MAC protocol takes care of transmission and retransmissions and RDC protocol will define sleep and wake-up cycles of nodes. Growing interest in mobile IoT, made us exlore the RDC protocols in the context of mobility. Since, duty cycle affects the power efficiency of nodes, it is essential to choose the efficient RDC protocol to increase the lifetime of the network in mobile IoT applications. Existing works have focused on the efficiency of RDC protocol in static scenarios however in mobile scenarios, the need for an efficient RDC protocol is enhanced due to the dynamic nature of the network. Since, node mobility poses many challenges, it is essential to know the impact of mobility on performance of the RDC protocol to ensure network reliability and responsiveness. Thus, in this work we have carried out experiments using Contiki OS/Cooja simulator to evaluate the performance of different combinations of MAC and RDC protocols in mobile scenarios with respect to routing protocol, IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL). Random Way Point mobility model is used for the evaluation. Bonnmotion tool is used to generate these mobility traces. CSMA/SicslowMAC, CSMA/CxMAC and CSMA/ContikiMAC combinations are used for comparison in the context of IoT environment.