RPL in a nutshell: A survey

Abstract

IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) is a routing protocol specifically designed for Low power and Lossy Networks (LLN) compliant with the 6LoWPAN protocol. It currently shows up as an RFC proposed by the IETF ROLL working group. However, RPL has gained a lot of maturity and is attracting increasing interest in the research community. The absence of surveys about RPL motivates us to write this paper, with the objective to provide a quick introduction to RPL. In addition, we present the most relevant research efforts made around RPL routing protocol that pertain to its performance evaluation, implementation, experimentation, deployment and improvement. We also present an experimental performance evaluation of RPL for different network settings to understand the impact of the protocol attributes on the network behavior, namely in terms of convergence time, energy, packet loss and packet delay. Finally, we point out open research challenges on the RPL design. We believe that this survey will pave the way for interested researchers to understand its behavior and contributes for further relevant research works. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.