Route-Over Forwarding Techniques in a 6LoWPAN

6LoWPAN plays a major role within the protocol stack for the future Internet of Things. Its fragmentation mechanism enables transport of IPv6 datagrams with the required minimum MTU of 1280 bytes over 802.15.4-based wireless sensor networks. With the envisioned goal of a fully standardized WSN protocol stack currently necessitating a route-over approach, i.e. routing at the IP-layer, there are two main choices for any 6LoWPAN implementation with regard to datagram fragmentation: Hop-by-hop assembly or a cross-layered direct mode, which forwards individual 6LoWPAN fragments before the whole datagram has arrived. In addition to these two straightforward approaches, we propose enhancements based on adaptive rate-restriction for the direct forwarding and a retry control for both modes to reduce the number of losses of larger datagrams. Our evaluation of the basic and enhanced forwarding modes within simulations and a hardware testbed indicate that the proposed enhancements can considerably improve packet reception rate and latency within 6LoWPAN networks.