Mobility Management for 6LoWPAN Wireless Sensor Networks in Critical Environments

This paper proposes a mobility management protocol for 6LoWPAN wireless sensor networks. In this protocol, the 6LoWPAN architecture is proposed, and both the hierarchical IPv6 address structure and the address configuration algorithm for 6LoWPAN WSN are presented. Based on the proposed architecture, the intra-network and inter-network mobility handover algorithms are proposed. In the algorithms, a mobile sensor node does not need a care-of address during the mobility process, so the mobility handover process does not include the care-of address configuration operation and the address binding operation. As a result, the mobility handover cost and delay are reduced. In addition, a mobile node does not need to be involved in the mobility handover process, so the energy is saved and the life span is prolonged. During the intra-network mobility handover process, a link address is used to identify a mobile node, so the size of the messages used to achieve the mobility handover operation is reduced substantially. As a result, the transmission cost and delay are reduced. The paper analyzes and compares the performance parameters of MIPv6, Inter-MARIO and the proposed protocol, including the mobility handover cost, the mobility handover delay and the packet loss rate. The data results show that the proposed protocol reduces the mobility handover cost, shortens the mobility handover delay and decreases the packet loss rate. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media New York.