Simulating Reliability of IoT Networks with RelIoT

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) networks are expected to operate reliably for many years while meeting the needs of a growing range of applications. However, a dependable operation may not always be maintained due to the reliability degradation of IoT devices. From low-power sensors to multi-core platforms, IoT devices age and degrade, leading to failures that necessitate maintenance. Reliability-aware design and management were shown to delay failures and improve the lifetime of individual devices. Even though the IoT networks can also radically benefit from this, the unavailability of network simulators that provide reliability modeling makes it impossible to assess reliability-aware strategies. To bridge this gap and enable reliability analysis at an early design phase, we introduce an integrated reliability framework called RelIoT for IoT networks, implemented in the ns-3 simulator. The framework also includes modeling of power, performance, and temperature, which are required to model reliability. We validate the simulations done using our framework and demonstrate that RelIoT accurately captures the power, temperature, and reliability dynamics of real networked IoT devices.