Performance Evaluation of the RPL Protocol in Fixed and Mobile Sink Low-Power and Lossy-Networks

Low-Power and Lossy-Network (LLN) are usually composed of static nodes, but the increase demand for mobility in mobile robotic and dynamic environment raises the question how the a routing protocol for Low-Power and Lossy-Networks such as (RPL) would perform in where a mobile sink is deployed. In this paper we investigate and evaluate the behaviour of the RPL protocol in fixed and mobile sink environments with respect to different network metrics such as latency, packet delivery ratio (PDR) and energy consumption. Extensive simulation using Instant Contiki simulator shows significant performance differences between fixed and mobile sink environments. Fixed sink LLNs performed better in terms of average power consumption, latency and packet delivery ratio. The results demonstrated also that the RPL protocol suffers from its sensitivity to mobility as it increases the number of isolated nodes.