Energy-efficient routing in IPv6 home networks

The multiplication of local access technologies and the increasing number of connected devices exhort today´s home networks to be more energy-efficient. In the literature, such kind of challenge is usually handled from the standpoint of devices remaining battery, making resulting approaches specific to resources constrained networks (e.g. wireless sensor networks, ad-hoc networks, etc.). This paper considers the exploitation of devices, either routers and/or hosts, links diversity (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, PLC, etc.) as an already pertinent mean to provide energy awareness in home network operations. In this paper, we focus on the design of an IPv6 energy-efficient routing protocol for such complex home networks. Our solution first enhances the OSPF core network routing protocol with a relevant energy metric that reflects the energy consumption of home network links technologies. We further expand the Neighbor Discovery protocol with an interface selection mechanism through two new options ELCO (Energy Link Cost Option) and EPCO (Energy Path Cost Option). This mechanism enables the selection of the most energy-efficient end-to-end path. Our approach is evaluated and compared with conventional routing protocols through real experimentations. The results show that significant energy savings can be reached when using our routing protocol.