Volume 18, Number 2

Energy Aware Routing Metric for Efficient Data Transmission in Low-Power and Lossy Networks

  Authors

Sabrina Mokrani¹, Tassadit Sadoun¹, Ahmed Lallal¹, Malika Belkadi¹, Jaime Lloret², Rachida Aoudjit¹, ¹Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria, ²Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain

  Abstract

Routing is an important element of network communication that enables data transmission between network devices. This process depends on a routing protocol, which assesses and selects the best route for data communication from source to destination using routing metrics. Consequently, the network's performance is directly impacted by the routing metric selection. Therefore, the choice of a routing metric directly influences the performance of the network. For example, an inadequate routing metric can increase data packet loss, latency, and energy consumption. In this study, we recognise the importance of routing metrics. For instance, the Expected Transmission Count (ETX) is a good measure of link quality. It estimates the transmission count required for successful communication. However, even though ETX is effective in terms of link reliability measurement, it fails to consider the consumed energy during communication. Yet, every data transmission consumes energy because a path with high reliability can still consume a lot of energy due to its length. For this reason, we propose Energy Aware_ ETX (EA_ETX), an enhanced form of ETX, which considers both link quality and energy consumption during communication. We integrate this proposed routing metric in the Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) and propose an objective function, which is labelled OF_EA_ETX. We conducted simulations in Contiki Cooja and compared the results of OF_EA_ETX with the predefined objective functions of RPL (MRHOF and OF0). The results demonstrate that our approach outperforms OF0 and MRHOF, respectively, by reducing energy consumption by 11.29% to 28.48%, minimising end-to-end delay by 2.08% to 21.58%, and improving packet delivery ratio by 16.67% to 36.13%.

  Keywords

Reliability. Energy efficiency. Routing Protocol. Routing metrics. Expected Transmission Count. Internet of Things.