Performance of mobile wireless sensor network communication with 6LoWPAN

This paper explores IPv6 in mobile wireless sensor networks (WSNs). An indoor WSN mobile sensor network testbed of length 24m was built and used for mobile WSN testing. The test network enabled the use of one or two moving nodes and six stationary nodes. A Java based web application called WSNWeb was implemented that displays and records real-time route topology changes and received sensor data. We created 65 test cases with one or two moving nodes, with variable velocities, routing table update periods (RTUPs) and data packet transmission rates. The effect of these parameters on quality of service was measured in terms of packet loss and on time packet loss (OTPL), a novel quality of service metric introduced in this paper. Results indicate that 6LoWPAN can accommodate communication with acceptable packet loss among nodes moving at a walking pace with data transmission frequencies up to 10 Hz and a RTUP as fast as 0.6 s. The highest observed packet loss and OTPL was 2.97% and 0.87%, respectively.