Modeling and Performance Analysis of Route-Over and Mesh-Under Routing Schemes in 6LoWPAN under Error-Prone Channel Condition

Abstract

6LoWPAN technology has attracted extensive attention recently. It is because 6LoWPAN is one of Internet of Things standard and it adapts to IPv6 protocol stack over low-rate wireless personal area network, such as IEEE 802.15.4. One view is that IP architecture is not suitable for low-rate wireless personal area network. It is a challenge to implement the IPv6 protocol stack into IEEE 802.15.4 devices due to that the size of IPv6 packet is much larger than the maximum packet size of IEEE 802.15.4 in data link layer. In order to solve this problem, 6LoWPAN provides header compression to reduce the transmission overhead for IP packets. In addition, two selected routing schemes, mesh-under and route-over routing schemes, are also proposed in 6LoWPAN to forward IP fragmentations under IEEE 802.15.4 radio link. The distinction is based on which layer of the 6LoWPAN protocol stack is in charge of routing decisions. In route-over routing scheme, the routing distinction is taken at the network layer and, in mesh-under, is taken by the adaptation layer. Thus, the goal of this research is to understand the performance of two routing schemes in 6LoWPAN under error-prone channel condition.