A Novel Reliable and Trust Objective Function for RPL-Based IoT Routing Protocol

The Internet of Things (IoT) integrates diverse devices into the Internet infrastructure, including sensors, meters, and wearable devices. Designing efficient IoT networks with these heterogeneous devices requires the selection of appropriate routing protocols, which is crucial for maintaining high Quality of Service (QoS). The Internet Engineering Task Force's Routing Over Low Power and Lossy Networks (IETF ROLL) working group developed the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) to meet these needs. While the initial RPL standard focused on single-metric route selection, ongoing research explores enhancing RPL by incorporating multiple routing metrics and developing new Objective Functions (OFs). This paper introduces a novel Objective Function (OF), the Reliable and Secure Objective Function (RSOF), designed to enhance the reliability and trustworthiness of parent selection at both the node and link levels within IoT and RPL routing protocols. The RSOF employs an adaptive parent node selection mechanism that incorporates multiple metrics, including Residual Energy (RE), Expected Transmission Count (ETX), Extended RPL Node Trustworthiness (ERNT), and a novel metric that measures node failure rate (NFR). In this mechanism, nodes with a high NFR are excluded from the parent selection process to improve network reliability and stability. The proposed RSOF was evaluated using random and grid topologies in the Cooja Simulator, with tests conducted across small, medium, and large-scale networks to examine the impact of varying node densities. The simulation results indicate a significant improvement in network performance, particularly in terms of average latency, packet acknowledgment ratio (PAR), packet delivery ratio (PDR), and Control Message Overhead (CMO), compared to the standard Minimum Rank with Hysteresis Objective Function (MRHOF).