Performance analysis of the routing protocol for low-ppwer and lossy networks in cc2538 based wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are a collection of embedded devices responsible for receiving data from sensors then wirelessly transmitting and routing the data to a specified central device. They are a rapidly growing technology for data harvesting applications that necessitate the assessment of novel protocols more suitable for their distinctive network topology. Most Wireless Networks are based upon the prevalent TCP/IP protocol stack or similar parallel architectures. However, the novel “Routing protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks”, abbreviated as “RPL”, is becoming ubiquitous in Wireless Sensor Networks where most packets are routed to a central sink or gateway node. Therefore, analysing the performance of RPL in isolation of the upper protocol layers present in most other implementations will potentially provide insight into the scalability and reliability of RPL independently of external factors. This project focuses on analysing the performance of a WSN based on the CC2538 module connected through the IPv6-based RPL utilizing the IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer. The analysis is conducted in two interconnected phases. The first phase of the project encompasses the identification of the performance characteristics of the CC2538 modules in peer-to-peer communication. The second phase utilizes the measurements derived from the previous phase in simulating the RPL protocol in a large-scale network with the help of the Contiki-Cooja simulator software. This project has resulted in identifying the necessary hardware and software for a practical CC2538 WSN node as well as identifying the simulated performance of RPL in a CC2538-based WSN.