Mobility Enhanced RPL for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we investigate the problem of supporting mobility over RPL (IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low power and Lossy Networks) when applied to route traffic in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). RPL is a routing protocol adapted for information routing with low power, low storage and processing sensor devices, in static topologies commonly found in WSNs, but which is not directly designed for mobile scenarios. Specifically, RPL actively decreases control traffic, at the price of lower reactivity to topology changes. In this paper, we propose to introduce some new mechanisms to the native RPL that reconcile decrease in control traffic and reactivity. They are based on an identification of mobile nodes, and furthermore they enhance RPL behavior in case of node mobility. Our approach will be, henceforth, called ME-RPL (Mobility Enhanced RPL).