Enhancing 6LoWPA Performance in Lossy Networks Using Complex and Combined Header Compression

Header compression is vital for efficient IPv6 communication in constrained IoT networks like 6LoWPAN. However, traditional IP Header Compression (IPHC) lacks selective retransmission and optimized fragmentation, reducing its effectiveness in lossy environments. This study evaluates three strategies-IPHC-only, Static Context Header Compression (SCHC)-only, and a combination IPHC + SCHC-using Contiki-NG and the Cooja simulator on a multi-hop Sky mote mesh network under varying success rates ($40 \%-100 \%$), focusing on energy consumption, latency, and retransmission overhead. Results show the IPHC + SCHC combination outperforms both standalone methods across all metrics. At $40 \%$ success, it lowers energy use by $28 \%$ over IPHC-only and $16 \%$ over SCHC-only. Latency drops by $27 \%$ and $13 \%$, respectively, while retransmissions are cut by $35 \%$ and $15 \%$. These gains stem from combining IPHC’s lightweight compression with SCHC’s selective ACK-on-Error retransmission. This combination offers a scalable, energy-efficient solution for real-time, lowpower IoT networks in smart cities, CPS, and industry. Future work will examine secure compression using DTLS and OSCORE, real deployments, and machine learning-based context adaptation.