A Synergistic Architecture for RPL over BLE

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a protocol architecture that enables IPv6 routing protocol for low power and lossy networks (RPL) to run on top of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), aiming to provide a BLE-based multi-hop IoT network. In our approach to RPL over BLE, we propose to use both of advertising and data channels of BLE to create synergistic effects between RPL and BLE to jointly achieve high energy efficiency and reliable multi-hop routing. We design an adaptation layer between BLE and RPL (ALBER) which tightly couples RPL and BLE operations together. Specifically, ALBER provides RPL control message broadcast through BLE, RPL routing metric calculation that reflects BLE link quality, and routing table update that incorporates BLE connection management. We implement ALBER in a Linux kernel to realize RPL over BLE and compare its performance with that of RPL over IEEE 802.15.4 on a multi-hop testbed network. The performance results show that our architecture is not only feasible but also provides almost perfect packet delivery performance (similar to 100%) and reduces duty-cycle up to 32% compared to RPL over IEEE 802.15.4 under varying link dynamics. Our research shows that RPL over BLE is a promising approach which can increase the utility and impact of BLE across different application domains.