RPL, the routing protocol proposed by IETF for IPv6 6LoWPAN Low Power and Lossy Networks has significant complexity. Another protocol called LOADng, a lightweight variant of AODV, emerges as an alternative solution. In this paper, we compare the performance of the two protocols in a Home Automation scenario with heterogenous traffic patterns including a mix of multipoint-to-point and point-to-multipoint routes in realistic dense non-uniform network topologies. We use Contiki OS and Cooja simulator to evaluate the behavior of the ContikiRPL implementation and a basic non-optimized implementation of LOADng. Unlike previous studies, our results show that RPL provides shorter delays, less control overhead, and requires less memory than LOADng. Nevertheless, enhancing LOADng with more efficient flooding and a better route storage algorithm may improve its performance.
presented a comparative performance study of RPL and LOADng in case of bidirectional traffic using simulations in NS2 @cite_5 . The paper shows a significantly larger control overhead of RPL caused by the maintenance of downward routes. It also compares the two protocols with an ideal routing protocol to show that RPL provides near-optimal routes while LOADng results in a certain gap. As the RPL RFC does not specify the period or the mechanism to use for maintaining downward routes, the study assumed an interval of 15 seconds. This choice is questionable, because it is the main cause of the high control overhead of RPL. Furthermore, the application-layer scenario used for the comparison is not the same for the two protocols. Thus, the question remains how LOADng and RPL perform under the same scenario.
@cite_5
2020854838
Routing protocols for sensor networks are often designed with explicit assumptions, serving to simplify design and reduce the necessary energy, processing and communications requirements. Different protocols make different assumptions - and this paper considers those made by the designers of RPL - an IPv6 routing protocol for such networks, developed within the IETF. Specific attention is given to the predominance of bi-directional traffic flows in a large class of sensor networks, and this paper therefore studies the performance of RPL for such flows. As a point of comparison, a different protocol, called LOAD, is also studied. LOAD is derived from AODV and supports more general kinds of traffic flows. The results of this investigation reveal that for scenarios where bi-directional traffic flows are predominant, LOAD provides similar data delivery ratios as RPL, while incurring less overhead and being simultaneously less constrained in the types of topologies supported.