Debugging Low-Power and Lossy Wireless Networks: A Survey

Recent economic and technical advances in wireless communication have allowed the deployment of low-power and lossy wireless networks-LowPANs, potentially comprised of a large number of nodes to serve new types of applications. However, the resource-constrained nature of microsensor platforms together with the unreliability and low-bandwidth of low-power and lossy wireless links have increased the risk and occurrence of network failures. Unlike with traditional wireless networks and controlled pre-deployment simulations and laboratory setups, likely events such as node crashes, inefficient networking and environmental interferences can potentially freeze a network post deployment. A survey of existing tools and related work in debugging LowPANs is presented, to provide a comprehensive state of the art of debugging tools and techniques. We divide debugging tools in two categories, pre-deployment tools and post-deployment tools, and evaluate their performance and limitations. From this study, we discuss the challenges in debugging LowPANs, providing the main issues and requirements that LowPANs´ specific constraints impose on debugging tools, to help developers choose the appropriate tool for specific needs.