Simulation and performance evaluation of DAG construction with RPL

Abstract

In this paper, we simulate and analyze the performance of the network formation process with the RPL (IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks), which is a routing protocol specifically designed for Low power and Lossy Networks (LLN) compliant with 6LoWPAN (IPv6 Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks). One motivation behind this work is that RPL is the first prospective candidate routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks, which are a main component in the next generation Internet-of-Things. RPL is still under development, although having gained maturity, and is open to improvements. Indeed, there is a need to understand well its behavior, and investigate its relevance. Our analysis is based on the ContikiRPL accurate and realistic simulation model developed under Contiki operating system. The performance of RPL is evaluated and analyzed for different network settings to understand the impact of the protocol attributes on the network formation performance, namely in terms energy, storage overhead, communication overhead, network convergence time and the maximum hop count. We argue through simulation that RPL provides several features that make it suitable to large scale networks.