A method of connecting batteryless devices to the IP networks

The concept and the techniques that consist the Internet of Things (IoT) has been widely studied over the last decade. The IoT architecture includes a number of different physical objects with different communication techniques (e.g., WiFi, Bluetooth, IEEE 802.15.4), which allow these things to connect themselves to the Internet. Along with the physical connectivity, a number of different IETF standards were introduced to logically interconnect devices to the Internet. However, many of the devices that consist IoT are heavily resource limited; therefore, have strict energy restrictions. Such devices, for example, batteryless devices, can face challenges when trying to support the entire IP stack for IoT (e.g., 6LoWPAN, RPL, CoAP, ICMPv6). In this paper, we propose a method of connecting the batteryless devices to IP-based networks as a radio sensor using IEEE 802.15.4 connectivity. Specifically, we propose a network architecture where a 6LoWPAN router is designated for packet translation of batteryless device-initiated packets. Our empirical results using a custom-designed batteryless platform, show that the proposed network architecture can effectively connect the prototyped batteryless device to IPv6-based networks.