Edinburgh Napier University

  IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy
Networks (RPL) is a standard for Wireless Sensors Networks. RPL uses two different ‘objective functions’ (OFs), namely Minimum Rank with Hysteresis Objective Function (MRHOF); and Objective Function Zero (OF0). The selection of the OF influences network topology, where a node chooses a set of potential parents towards the destination. However, there has not been any depth study for the impact of Objective Function behaviour in the RPL environment. So this paper has investigated using an extensive simulations, the impact of a number of important parameters in RPL, for example Packet Reception Ratio (RX), Random Topologies, Grid Topology under two Objective Functions. The simulation results revealed that
most of these parameters have a great impact on the PDR and achieved saved energy levels in a given IoT network. Our results have also indicated that the performance of RPL is similar for OF0 and MRHOF, but within light density networks MRHOF can provide a perfect RPL behavior that OF0 could not provide. For example the average power consumption ratio of MRHOF is around 1.16% and 1.15% when we have used Random topology and Grid topology respectively. While OF0 have consumed around 1.23% and 1.20% when we have used Random topology
and Grid topology respectively at different RX values.