Low-power Networks Research Articles

Analyzing the influence of electric vehicle charging scheduling on distribution transformer lifespan

The ongoing growth in global electricity demand and rapid proliferation of electric vehicles (EVs) are posing challenges to the operation of the low voltage power networks and their components. This study aims to analyze the impacts of peak-load demand on the distribution transformers, considering mild and extreme combinations of electric energy demand and localized charging of plug-in EVs under their different penetration levels, hypothesizing that shifting the demand for charging throughout the day can reduce the aging of distribution transformers. The proposed method employs a fuzzy-logic-based tool, which incorporates the influence of ambient temperature, higher harmonics, reactive power compensation, reverse power flows, and overload. Three different charging/discharging modes have been considered: demand charging, off-peak charging, and synergy of off-peak charging and vehicle-to-house technology. The results indicate that off-peak charging emerges as 2.1 times more effective than demand charging in terms of the transformer's loss of life, particularly for ultimate EV penetration of 100 %. It is demonstrated that the utilization of charging scheduling for EVs should be prioritized to defer costly system upgrades and reinforcements, particularly when EV penetration exceeds 50 %.

Behavioural Analysis of Hatchetman Attacker for Detection & Prevention in Low Power and Lossy IoT Network

Behavioural Analysis of Hatchetman Attacker for Detection & Prevention in Low Power and Lossy IoT Network

RPL*: An Explainable AI-based routing protocol for Internet of Mobile Things

The Internet of Mobile Things (IoMT) is an emerging paradigm of Internet of Things (IoT) with special focus on enabling mobility to the ‘things’. Several IoMT applications such as group of robots or drones performing collaborative search and rescue operation, identification of mines, warehouse management, goods delivery, etc can be considered as examples of IoMT systems. In the applications mentioned above, the nodes may send the information in a multi-hop manner to the root or coordinator node which may be static or mobile. While the Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) is extensively utilized in static IoT networks, it encounters significant limitations in handling mobility and providing resilience against routing attacks in mobile IoT networks. In this work, we propose a modified RPL, RPL* which is robust to handling mobility in nodes and is resilient towards routing attacks. In RPL*, any deviation from the normal behaviors of the network are identified as anomalies using an unsupervised Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) strategy. In RPL*, we propose a novel mobility detection mechanism that will identify the mobility in the network in an energy efficient manner without incurring additional communication overhead. To maintain the connectivity with parent node, we propose a novel proactive connectivity management mechanism in RPL* which will ensure a smooth transition from one parent to another if required, thus avoiding the network partitioning due to mobility. The performance analysis of the system has demonstrated an improvement in packet delivery ratio of the mobile nodes by 40% due to the proposed RPL* when compared to RPL. Also, the proposed XAI strategy provided an F1-score of over 95% for the detection of sink hole and black hole attacks in the tested IoMT network scenarios. It was observed that RPL* improves the performance of the IoMT network when compared to RPL. However it may be noted that the mechanisms introduced to support mobility does not lead to a drop in PDR or increase in control packet overhead for static networks. Hence, RPL* can be considered as an alternative to RPL for IoT as well as IoMT networks.

Efficient multicast forwarding in low power and lossy networks under RPL non‐storing mode

SummaryThe Internet of Things (IoT) continues to find novel applications across various domains. These applications require the support of efficient communication protocols in the Low Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs). The development of efficient multicast protocols is one such area that requires critical research attention. Efficient multicast protocols are especially important in the non‐storing mode of IPv6 Routing Protocol for LLNs (RPL), considering its applicability in real‐world IoT applications. However, the development of non‐storing RPL multicast protocols needs to handle the intricacies associated with source routing. Addressing these issues, this paper presents a novel multicast protocol named Multicast Forwarding in LLNs under Non‐storing mode (MFLN). MFLN uses Bloom Filters to minimize the overhead that comes with source routing. While retaining the best features of multicast protocols operating in the storing mode of RPL such as bidirectional traffic and cross‐layer optimization with ContikiMAC, MFLN also includes a novel metric named Mode Selection Metric (MSM) to decide the suitable link‐layer forwarding method. MSM makes this decision based on the ability of a node, in terms of its residual energy, to perform multiple link‐layer unicasts. Thus, MFLN saves the node battery from running out and at the same time reduces the duplicate packets created due to link‐layer broadcasts. The simulations conducted using Contiki‐COOJA indicate considerable improvements in terms of packet delivery ratio, energy consumption per delivered packet, packet transmissions, end‐to‐end delay, and normalized routing overhead for the proposed protocol.

ITRPL: An intelligent and trusted RPL protocol based on Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) is the de-facto routing standard in IoT networks. It enables nodes to collaborate and autonomously build ad-hoc networks modeled by tree-like destination-oriented direct acyclic graphs (DODAG). Despite its widespread usage in industry and healthcare domains, RPL is susceptible to insider attacks. Although the state-of-the-art RPL ensures that only authenticated nodes participate in DODAG, such hard security measures are still inadequate to prevent insider threats. This entails a need to integrate soft security mechanisms to support decision-making. This paper proposes iTRPL, an intelligent and behavior-based framework that incorporates trust to segregate honest and malicious nodes within a DODAG. It also leverages multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) to make autonomous decisions concerning the DODAG. The framework enables a parent node to compute the trust for its child and decide if the latter can join the DODAG. It tracks the behavior of the child node, updates the trust, computes the rewards (or penalties), and shares them with the root. The root aggregates the rewards/penalties of all nodes, computes the overall return, and decides via its ϵ-Greedy MARL module if the DODAG will be retained or modified for the future. A simulation-based performance evaluation demonstrates that iTRPL learns to make optimal decisions with time.

OPSMOTE-ML: an optimized SMOTE with machine learning models for selective forwarding attack detection in low power and lossy networks of internet of things

OPSMOTE-ML: an optimized SMOTE with machine learning models for selective forwarding attack detection in low power and lossy networks of internet of things

Al‐based energy aware parent selection mechanism to enhance security and energy efficiency for smart homes in Internet of Things

AbstractThe growing ubiquity of Internet of Things (IoT) devices within smart homes demands the use of advanced strategies in IoT implementation, with an emphasis on energy efficiency and security. The incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the IoT framework improves the overall efficiency of the network. An inefficient mechanism of parent selection at the network layer of IoT causes energy drain in the nodes, particularly near the sink node. As a result, nodes die earlier, causing network holes that further increase the control message overhead as well as the energy consumption of the network, compromising network security. This research introduces an AI‐based approach to parent selection of the Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy networks (RPL) at the network layer of IoT to enhance security and energy efficiency. A novel objective function, named Energy and Parent Load Objective Function (EA‐EPL), is also proposed that considers the composite metrics, including energy and parent load. Extensive experiments are conducted to assess EA‐EPL against OF0 and MRHOF algorithms. Experimental results show that EA‐EPL outperformed these algorithms in improving energy efficiency, network stability, and packet delivery ratio. The results also demonstrate a significant enhancement in the overall efficiency of IoT networks and increased security in smart home environments.

Advancing Healthcare Networks: Optimizing Multi-Objective RPL for Diverse Traffic in Low-Power, Lossy Environments

RPL: Powering modern healthcare IoT Networks. The Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks(RPL) is a protocol specifically designed for routing in networks characterized by low power and lossy connections built on IPv6. It is specifically designed for the growing use of Instantaneous IoT (Internet of Things) applications. These networks cater to the specialized requirements of Low Power (resource-constrained) and Lossy Networks(unstable networks), also known as LLNs, where routing data smoothly and prioritizing traffic types are the significant challenges. Studies have shown that standard RPL, which makes use of a set of routing rules, struggles to provide the level of performance that many IoT applications in modern-day healthcare demand. This limits RPL’s potential in scenarios where we have a mix of data traffic, which is very common in healthcare settings. To handle the diverse data traffic found in healthcare settings, our method involves distributing several instances of RPL settings throughout the network. The main objective of this strategy is to improve the effectiveness of important and critical healthcare applications. We have developed and thoroughly tested our system using Contiki, which is an open-source IoT operating system. We have three instances in our MultiInstance RPL setup, each of which is intended to handle different kinds of network traffic and provide varying Quality of Service (QoS) measures. Different sets of Objective Function (OF) rules are used by each instance to decide which route is optimal for the data it processes. We have made use of OF0 (Objective Function 0) and MRHOF (Minimum Rank with Hysteresis Objective Function). We have rigorously tested our solution. Our focus has been on metrics like delay, average energy consumption and Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR). Compared to standard RPL, our approach improved packet delivery rates and significantly reduced delays for high priority data packets. This research shows how to better address the complex data traffic needs of real-time healthcare IoT networks.

Routing attack induced anomaly detection in IoT network using RBM-LSTM

The network of resource constraint devices, also known as the Low power and Lossy Networks (LLNs), constitutes the edge tire of the Internet of Things applications like smart homes, smart cities, and connected vehicles. The IPv6 Routing Protocol over Low power and lossy networks (RPL) ensures efficient routing in the edge tire of the IoT environment. However, RPL has inherent vulnerabilities that allow malicious insider entities to instigate several security attacks in the IoT network. As a result, the IoT networks suffer from resource depletion, performance degradation, and traffic disruption. Recent literature discusses several machine learning algorithms to detect one or more routing attacks. However, IoT infrastructures are expanding, and so are the attack surfaces. Therefore, it is essential to have a solution that can adapt to this change. This paper introduces a comprehensive framework to detect routing attacks within Low Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs). The proposed solution leverages deep learning by combining Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). The framework is trained on 11 network parameters to understand and predict normal network behavior. Anomalies, identified as deviations from the forecast trends, serve as indicators of potential routing attacks and thus address vulnerabilities in the RPL.

An Intrusion Detection System against RPL-based Routing Attacks for IoT Networks

<span lang="EN-US">The significant improvement in the Internet, Internet of Things (IoT), communication, and cloud computing have created considerable challenges in providing security for data and devices. In IoT networks, “Routing Protocol for Low power and Lossy networks”- (RPL) is a communication protocol that enables devices to exchange information and communicate with limited resources like low processing capabilities, less memory and energy. Through the Internet, unauthorised users can access RPL-based IoT networks, making these networks susceptible to routing attacks. Therefore, it is crucial to design Intrusion Detection System-(IDS) to address attacks from IoT communication devices. In this paper, we have proposed GCNConv, a Graph Neural Network (GNN) method that allows capturing the edge and node features of a graph to identify routing attacks. The proposed system has experimented on the RADAR dataset and experimental findings proved that, our approach performs well compared to state-of-the-art method with reference to precision, F1-score, accuracy and recall.</span>

An intelligent fuzzy enabled parent node selection approach in low power networks

The Internet of Things lies in establishing low-power and lossy networks created by interconnecting many wireless devices with limited resources. Fascinatingly, an IPv6 routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks has become a common practice for these applications. Even though this protocol addresses the challenges of low-power networks, many issues concerning the quality of service and energy consumption are open to the research community. The protocol relies on a destination-oriented directed acyclic graph, and the root selection depends on some constraints and metrics associated with an objective function (OF). The conventional OFs select parents based on a single metric, such as the expected transmission count or the number of nodes to travel. The current paper proposes an enhancement to the OF metric, aiming to decrease node energy and enhance the quality of service. This improvement is achieved by the factors, including the received signal strength indicator, node distance, power, link quality indicator, and expected transmission count, to select reliable communication links. The minimum power needed for reliable communication is predicted from the received signal strength indicator, node distance, receiver power, and link quality indicator using a nonlinear support vector machine. The OF value of the candidate node is computed from the power level and expected transmission count combined using the Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model. The proposed OF is implemented in the Cooja simulator and compared against minimum rank with hysteresis OF and OF zero. A considerable improvement in the packet delivery ratio and a 37.5% reduction in energy consumption is obtained.

Efficient Optimization approach in WSN using Multicast Forwarding Scheme in 6LowPAN Environment

The rapidly growing network of devices that are connected known as the Internet of Things, also referred to as IoT, is designed to collect and exchange data. These devices are integrated with sensors, software, and other technologies. An IPv6-based routing system called 6LowPAN was created especially for Internet of Things devices with little resources. However, because multicast packets must be replicated to every multicast group member, the conventional multicast forwarding technique in 6LowPAN may be wasteful. This can result in excessive energy usage and network traffic, particularly in large-scale Internet of Things implementations. An optimization process is presented here using a multicast forwarding scheme. In the proposed forwarding scheme, nodes can send multicast packets up and down at Low Power and Lossy networks over the 6LowPAN environment. Should the sink node be on the root node, it should immediately request that other nodes join the multicast messaging network of things. If otherwise, an ICMPv6 packet will be sent towards the root node in the Destination-oriented Directed-Acyclic Graphs (DODAG) tree, which expands the multicast messages in the first source's interest. In multi-bounce forward straight-line topology, when the DODAG network root is the source of multicast congestion, it exhibits a similar ratio of packet delivery and delay from end to end with a minimal memory overhead. When traffic via multicast originates from the most important rank node in a backward straight-line topology, this paper focuses on the efficiency of the multicast network at 6LowPAN.

Investigating Routing Protocol Attacks on Low Power and Lossy IoT Networks

Investigating Routing Protocol Attacks on Low Power and Lossy IoT Networks

Towards an IoT based secured framework for smart cities

<p>Cities are evolving into smart urban environments, where various devices, technologies, services, connections, blocks, and storage systems are transforming to embrace smart solutions, departing from traditional counterparts. This intricate network of interconnected devices collectively constitutes the Internet of Things (IoT), promising users a life of enhanced convenience. However, this transformation also introduces challenges, particularly in managing loosely linked devices and transmitting information across networks. This study conducts a comprehensive review of the various components contributing to the formation of a smart city, scrutinizing the challenges and factors that influence them. The overarching objective is to identify specific areas within smart cities grappling with cybersecurity challenges and ascertain the relative significance of each area. Data for this research is gathered through questionnaires, expert opinions, and paired comparisons drawn from previous studies, and employs the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process approach to determine the weight of each factor and sub-factor, subsequently ranking them. Among the nine identified factors, the "Smart Security" factor is the most critical, with a weight of 0.198, signifying its paramount importance. To overcome the security challenges in smart cities, we introduce an advanced secure framework (ARPL) for detecting security threats, using the Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) as its foundation. The advanced framework is adept at identifying a variety of attacks. Performance assessments of the proposed framework encompass several key parameters, such as ADA, TPR, FPR, and end-to-end delay. The positive outcomes observed strongly endorse the effectiveness of the proposed framework, positioning it as an optimal solution for RPL-based smart environments.</p>

An Energy-Saving and Environment-Friendly Networked Intelligent Door Lock System for Offices

With the development of IoT technology and the improvement of people’s living standards, smart locks have become prevalent in ordinary households. However, for enterprises and institutions requiring unified management and control capabilities for networked smart locks, the technology has been relatively lagging, and there is a lack of established brands. Existing products are mostly based on wireless low-power network protocols, leading to common issues of low stability, limited network scalability, and high maintenance efforts. This paper addresses the problems existing in current networked lock systems and leverages the centralized office characteristics of enterprises and institutions. By integrating IoT technology and Power over Ethernet- (PoE-) centralized power supply, we have developed a networked smart lock system with unified management and control capabilities. This system is primarily designed for applications in offices, collective dormitories, and hotels of enterprises, institutions, and schools. The test results demonstrate that even with a scale of over tens of thousands of networked locks under unified control, the system maintains fast response times and low packet loss rates. It also incorporates energy-saving and environmentally friendly features, as well as easy automatic updates, facilitating convenient postdeployment maintenance. Thus, it effectively meets the requirements for centralized management and control in different application scenarios with centralized use of rooms. In conclusion, this research has led to the development of a unified management and control networked smart lock system, which is well suited for enterprises, institutions, and schools. Its scalability, speed, energy efficiency, and ease of maintenance make it an excellent solution for various application scenarios requiring centralized management and control of access.

RT-Ranked: Towards Network Resiliency by Anticipating Demand in TSCH/RPL Communication Environments

Time-slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) Media Access Control (MAC) was specified to target the Industrial Internet of Things needs. This MAC balances energy, bandwidth, and latency for deterministic communications in unreliable wireless environments. Building a distributed or autonomous TSCH schedule is arduous because the node negotiates cells with its neighbours based on queue occupancy, latency, and consumption metrics. The Minimal TSCH Configuration defined by RFC 8180 was specified for bootstrapping a 6TiSCH network and detailed configurations necessary to be supported. In particular, it adopts Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy networks (RPL) Non-Storing mode, which reduces the node’s network awareness. Dealing with unpredicted traffic far from the forwarding node is difficult due to limited network information. Anticipating this unexpected flow from multiple network regions is essential because it can turn the forwarding node into a network bottleneck leading to high latency, packet discard or disconnection rates, forcing RPL to change the topology. To cope with that, this work proposes a new mechanism that implements an RPL control message option for passing forward the node’s cell demand, allowing the node to anticipate the proper cell allocation for supporting the traffic originating by nodes far from the forwarding point embedded in Destination-Oriented Directed Acyclic Graph (DODAG) Information Object (DIO) and Destination Advertisement Object (DAO) RPL control messages. Implementing this mechanism in a distributed TSCH Scheduling developed in Contiki-NG yielded promising results in supporting unforeseen traffic bursts and has the potential to significantly improve the performance and reliability of TSCH schedules in challenging network environments.

A Trust Based Anomaly Detection Scheme Using a Hybrid Deep Learning Model for IoT Routing Attacks Mitigation

Internet of Things (IoT), as a remarkable paradigm, establishes a wide range of applications in various industries like healthcare, smart homes, smart cities, agriculture, transportation, and military domains. This widespread technology provides a general platform for heterogeneous objects to connect, exchange, and process gathered information. Beside significant efficiency and productivity impacts of IoT technology, security and privacy concerns have emerged more than ever. The routing protocol for low power and lossy networks (RPL) which is standardized for IoT environment, suffers from the basic security considerations, which makes it vulnerable to many well‐known attacks. Several security solutions have been proposed to address routing attacks detection in RPL–based IoT, most of which are based on machine learning techniques, intrusion detection systems and trust‐based approaches. Securing RPL–based IoT networks is challenging because resource constraint IoT devices are connected to untrusted Internet, the communication links are lossy and the devices use a set of novel and heterogenous technologies. Therefore, providing light‐weight security mechanisms play a vital role in timely detection and prevention of IoT routing attacks. In this paper, we proposed a novel anomaly detection–based trust management model using the concepts of sequence prediction and deep learning. We have formulated the problem of routing behavior anomaly detection as a time series forecasting method, which is solved based on a stacked long–short term memory (LSTM) sequence to sequence autoencoder; that is, a hybrid training model of recurrent neural networks and autoencoders. The proposed model is then utilized to provide a detection mechanism to address four prevalent and destructive RPL attacks including: black‐hole attack, destination‐oriented directed acyclic graph (DODAG) information solicitation (DIS) flooding attack, version number (VN) attack, and decreased rank (DR) attack. In order to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed model in timely detection of RPL–specific routing attacks, we have implemented the proposed model on several RPL–based IoT scenarios simulated using Contiki Cooja simulator separately, and the results have been compared in details. According to the presented results, the implemented detection scheme on all attack scenarios, demonstrated that the trend of estimated anomaly between real and predicted routing behavior is similar to the evaluated attack frequency of malicious nodes during the RPL process and in contrast, analyzed trust scores represent an opposite pattern, which shows high accurate and timely detection of attack incidences using our proposed trust scheme.

An efficient secure and energy resilient trust-based system for detection and mitigation of sybil attack detection (SAN).

In the modern digital market flooded by nearly endless cyber-security hazards, sophisticated IDS (intrusion detection systems) can become invaluable in defending against intricate security threats. Sybil-Free Metric-based routing protocol for low power and lossy network (RPL) Trustworthiness Scheme (SF-MRTS) captures the nature of the biggest threat to the routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks under the RPL module, known as the Sybil attack. Sybil attacks build a significant security challenge for RPL networks where an attacker can distort at least two hop paths and disrupt network processes. Using such a new way of calculating node reliability, we introduce a cutting-edge approach, evaluating parameters beyond routing metrics like energy conservation and actuality. SF-MRTS works precisely towards achieving a trusted network by introducing such trust metrics on secure paths. Therefore, this may be considered more likely to withstand the attacks because of these security improvements. The simulation function of SF-MRTS clearly shows its concordance with the security risk management features, which are also necessary for the network's performance and stability maintenance. These mechanisms are based on the principles of game theory, and they allocate attractions to the nodes that cooperate while imposing penalties on the nodes that do not. This will be the way to avoid damage to the network, and it will lead to collaboration between the nodes. SF-MRTS is a security technology for emerging industrial Internet of Things (IoT) network attacks. It effectively guaranteed reliability and improved the networks' resilience in different scenarios.

Methods and means of conflict-free data exchange in the group of mobile robotic platforms

When using groups of mobile robotic platforms (MRP), problems arise related to the management of individual platforms, the organization of cooperation in the group, and the management of the group as a whole. Management of the MRP group involves managing the actions of individual platforms to achieve the group's overall goal. To ensure the management of the MRP group in such a case, it is advisable to choose a hybrid method that requires solving the problem of conflict-free data exchange and control commands between the MRPs in the group. To solve this problem, it is proposed to improve the relevant methods and tools. The scientific novelty of the obtained research results is that a method of multi-channel conflict-free data exchange has been developed, which provides a real-time mode due to the coordination of the intensity of data arrival with the intensity of access. The method of controlling the movement of a group of mobile robotic platforms has been improved, which, by taking into account the changing parameters of the platforms and the changing state of the surrounding environment, provides effective management of the MRP group in real time. The practical significance of the research results is that it is proposed to use the CSMA/CA slotted mechanism for non-time-critical traffic to improve performance, and for time-critical traffic, coordinator-controlled access using guaranteed time slots. The hybrid method of management takes into account the advantages of centralized and distributed depending on specific tasks and conditions of use. It is proposed to use a multi-channel device for conflict-free exchange using the method of time allocation of RAM resources for data exchange in hybrid control. It is shown that global low-power networks LPWANs (Low-Power Wide Area Networks) can be used to transmit small blocks of data at a low speed when exchanging with MRP. It is proposed to use the slotted CSMA/CA mechanism for the transmission of non-time-critical traffic, and for time-critical traffic, coordinator-controlled access using guaranteed time slots. It is shown that the performance of the network during the conflict-free access period CFP depends on the results of the distribution of guaranteed GTS time slots among active users. LoRa technology was selected for long-distance data exchange between MRPs, which at the MAC (Media Access Control) sublayer allows for transmission planning and communication management between end devices and gateways, avoiding collisions and optimizing network performance.

A New Lightweight Routing Protocol for Internet of Mobile Things Based on Low Power and Lossy Network Using a Fuzzy-Logic Method

The IoT devices with embedded mobile devices create the Internet of Mobile Things (IoMT) paradigm. Mobility is not supported by the routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (RPL) created for static networks. IoMT has raised routing challenges such as link failure, instability, energy depletion, packet loss, and handover delay in the network. In this context, IoMT Fuzzy-based RPL (IoMT-FRPL) is proposed in this paper to enhance routing performance. Receiving Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), Euclidean distance, Hop Count, and Expected Transmission Count (ETX) metrics are built into the fuzzy interface system for the mobile nodes in the network to conserve energy. The IoMT-FRPL consists of the following three key steps: The first steps are data transmission and motion investigation, the second is fuzzy-based prediction of a new static parent for the mobile node, and the third is verifying the unique attachment point. When conventional RPL, mRPL, and EMA-RPL were compared to IoMT-performance FRPL's in Cooja/Contiki 2.7, the simulation results revealed improvements in energy consumption, handover delay, packet delivery rate (PDR), and signaling cost.