mRPL+: A mobility management framework in RPL/6LoWPAN

In this work, we show that interoperability between fixed and mobile nodes can be successfully achieved through the use of appropriate hand-off and topology management techniques. We propose a mobility management framework (dubbed mRPL+) unifying two hand-off models: (1) hard hand-off, where a mobile node has to break a link before finding a new link, and (2) soft hand-off, where a mobile node selects the new link before disconnecting from the current one. Importantly, mRPL+ is integrated in the 6LoWPAN/RPL stack in a backward compatible manner. Simulation results indicate that in a network with mobile nodes, packet delivery ratio with mRPL+ is nearly 100%, where RPL achieves 80% in best-case. Hand-off process has a disconnected period of few milliseconds (hand-off delay = 4 ms), while RPL experiences few seconds of disconnection during node's mobility (3−10 s).