Study of the Impact of Various Objective Functions on the Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

The Internet of Things has known a rapidly vast implementation. For that reason, many studies have tended to focus on the area of Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks that specified as an IPv6 routing protocol for wireless sensor networks. These studies aim to evaluate various networking characteristics such as communication quality and energy consumption. According to the uniformity of energy assignment for sensor nodes, WSNs can be divided into two categories: homogeneous and heterogeneous networks. However, almost all of the existing research papers deal with the homogeneous class. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive study for the performance of the two comparative objective functions used in RPL: MRHOF and OF0 for the heterogeneous WSN. This study helps to deduce which objective function is the most effective to assure good functioning of RPL in heterogeneous environment. Simulations were done using the Cooja simulator in Contiki operating system, as it is the widely used framework for WSNs that can support simulation of heterogeneous sensor networks. The work also analyzes various parameters: energy consumption, latency, PDR and control traffic overhead (DAO, DIO, DIS and DAO-ACK). The selected metrics taken into consideration are Energy, ETX and HC. The results show that MRHOF acts better than the OF in regard to all parameters except for Control Traffic Overhead.