Problem analysis of RPL overhead in 6LOWPAN using 5W1H model

Abstract

Smart Home (SH) is one of the Internet of Thing (IoT) ecosystem that is experiencing rapid growth, especially in communication and application technologies. However, most applications of SH are embedded devices that are categorized as low power, less memory usage, and limited cost. Therefore, the IPv6 Low Power Area Network (6LoWPAN) is introduced by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in order to fulfill the connectivity requirement of embedded devices. However, the 6LoWPAN standard is restricted to 250 kbps and the frame length is limited to 127 bytes, whereas the packet size over IPv6 is 1280 bytes. Because of this glaring discrepancy, routing becomes the main issues in 6LoWPAN network capability. There is a number of existing routing protocols for 6LoWPAN, and among them RPL is effective in terms of latency and throughput, but the overhead is considerably high when implemented in a large-scale network. Therefore, this study focusses on analysing the causes of RPL overhead in the 6LoWPAN network. For that, this document analysis employed the 5W1H (What, Where, When, Why, Who and How) model in investigating and describing the causes of RPL overhead in 6LoWPAN. The results of this model show four (4) critical parameters needed to be addressed in solving the RPL overhead problem: i) network topology change, ii) limitation of 6LoWPAN, iii) Node failure in the large network and iv) additional transmission information. Furthermore, the future goal of this study is to come up with a novel 6LoWPAN routing protocol algorithm that would be used as high-level technical recommendations for IoT SH ecosystem communication.