Low-power wireless networks play an important role in the Internet of Things. Typically, these networks consist of a very large number of lossy and low-capacity devices, challenging the current state of the art in protocol design. In this context the Trickle algorithm plays an important role, serving as the basic mechanism for message dissemination in notable protocols such as RPL and MPL. While Trickle's broadcast suppression mechanism has been proven to be efficient, recent work has shown that it is intrinsically unfair in terms of load distribution and that its performance relies strongly on network topology. This can lead to increased end-to-end delays (MPL), or creation of sub-optimal routes (RPL). Furthermore, as highlighted in this work, there is no clear consensus within the research community about what the proper parameter settings of the suppression mechanism should be. We propose an extension to the Trickle algorithm, called adaptive-k, which allows nodes to individually adapt their suppression mechanism to local node density. Supported by analysis and a case study with RPL, we show that this extension allows for an easier configuration of Trickle, making it more robust to network topology.
In this paper, we investigate schemes for energy-efficient multi-hop broadcasting in large-scale dense Wireless Sensor Networks. We begin with an initial simplified study of the schemes for relay selection. Our first finding is that MPR-based (Multipoint Relay) mechanisms work poorly in a dense network while the recently proposed Multicast Protocol for Low power and Lossy Networks (MPL) protocol based on Trickle performs better. However, Trickle requires to overhear packet retransmissions in the vicinity, while sensor nodes try to avoid overhearing by periodically waking up and going to sleep to save energy. We propose Beacon-based Forwarding Tree (BFT), a new scheme that achieves similar performance to MPL, although it fits better the case of nodes with low radio duty cycling MACs of the type of beacon-enabled IEEE 802.15.4. Our scheme also guarantees network coverage and its optimized version results in the shortest path distance to the broadcast source at a cost of lesser load mitigation. We compare and discuss the measured performance of MPL on top of ContikiMAC and BFT over beacon-enabled 802.15.4 on a Contiki testbed. The experimental results of the comparisons show that BFT may achieve very good performance for a range of broadcast intensity, it has a predictable power consumption, a remarkable low power consumption for leaf nodes, and low loss rates. On the other hand, MPL over ContikiMAC can obtain very low duty cycles for low broadcast traffic. Trickle is a polite gossip algorithm for managing communication traffic. It is of particular interest in low-power wireless networks for reducing the amount of control traffic, as in routing protocols (RPL), or reducing network congestion, as in multicast protocols (MPL). Trickle is used at the network or application level, and relies on up-to-date information on the activity of neighbors. This makes it vulnerable to interference from the media access control layer, which we explore in this paper. We present several scenarios how the MAC layer in low-power radios violates Trickle timing. As a case study, we analyze the impact of CSMA CA with ContikiMAC on Trickle’s performance. Additionally, we propose a solution called Cleansing that resolves these issues.