Multi-radio Solution for Improving Reliability in RPL

As part of the recent advances in the IoT world, constrained platforms featuring more than one radio interface have emerged. Typically, they combine the more classical short-range radio and the long or medium range technologies. However, their full potential is not yet exploited. The modifications to the IPv6 routing protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) and the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer presented in this paper are a first step in this direction. They allow the node to automatically select the most suitable radio link if more than one is available, improving network reliability. This can be especially relevant for monitoring and smart cities applications. The solution is implemented in the ContikiOS, and tested with the Zolertia Re-mote platform, but can be extended to any platform featuring more than one radio interface. The presented testbed experiments indicate that more investigation is needed to optimally tune RPL’s metrics for networks featuring nodes with dual-band communication capabilities.