Volume 17, Number 1

A Novel Stable Path Selection Algorithm for Enhancing Qos and Network Lifetime in RPL-Contiki-based IoT Networks

  Authors

Mohamed Achref BOUKHOBZA ¹, Mehdi ROUISSAT ^1,2, Mohammed BELKHEIR ³, Allel MOKADDEM ³ and Pascal LORENZ ⁴, ¹ NourBachir University Center, Algeria, ² STICLaboratory,UniversityAboubekrBelkaid, Algeria , ³ Nour Bachir University Center El-Bayadh, Algeria, ⁴ Haute Alsace University, France

  Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) facilitates real-time connectivity of objects, allowing for access from anywhere at any time. For IoT Low-Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs), the Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) has been introduced. In RPL-based topologies, the rank of nodes reflects their positions within the network, calculated by adding the rank of a node's preferred parent to the link metric between them. However, due to inaccuracies in assigning link metric values to neighboring nodes, frequent changes in preferred parent selection occur, resulting in significant control overhead, increased energy consumption, higher latency, and degraded Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR). This paper presents an optimized path selection method that ensures the most stable and optimal choice of preferred parents for nodes. Using the Cooja simulator under various network densities, the proposed approach demonstrates a 73% reduction in preferred parent changes, a 49% decrease in control overhead, and a 50% reduction in total energy consumption. Additionally, it improves PDR by 46% and reduces latency by 2.81 seconds.

  Keywords

IoT, RPL, QoS, Objective Functions, Routing metric, ETX.