Trickle-L2: Lightweight link quality estimation through Trickle in RPL networks

Lightweight link quality estimation is crucial in wireless sensor networks. Indeed, devices with limited capabilities shall trade off between consuming their resources to maintain a precise view of the neighbours' link quality and to build routes almost blindly. For instance, the Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL), which has been recently standardised by the IETF to enable IPv6-based sensor networks, only estimates the quality of the links used to deliver data packets. However, this solution has been demonstrated to cause periods of routing instability and reduced packet delivery rates since it estimates only the quality of utilised links. To address this issue in this work we propose a lightweight link estimation procedure that exploits Trickle-based topology maintenance techniques to simultaneously estimate link qualities and propagate routing information. Our proposed scheme has been integrated in the Contiki's RPL prototype implementation. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposal is capable of measuring the quality of the links to neighbours with small overhead, which results into better routing decisions and improved packet delivery rates.