New Routing Framework for RPL: Constructing Power-Efficient Wireless Sensor Network

This paper proposes a new framework to improve the power efficiency of the IPv6 routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (RPL). The new framework makes it possible for the root node of a destination-oriented directed acyclic graph (DODAG root) to determine which new device will join the DODAG and its parent DODAG node, which is the parent node for the new device on the DODAG tree, based on the proposed composite value. This composite value is based on the distance between a new device and a potential parent DODAG node, the number of child DODAG nodes, which are the DODAG nodes directly under the potential parent DODAG node, and the hop-count between the DODAG root and the new device. The device having the lowest composite value to a potential parent DODAG node is chosen by the DODAG root, and the new device joins the DODAG by connecting itself directly under the parent DODAG node. When this framework is applied to RPL, the longevity of the devices on the DODAG increases dramatically, becoming as much as 10 times longer. In addition, by changing the weights of each metric of the composite value, we can adjust the composite value appropriately depending on the features of various wireless sensor networks.