Pushing the Internet to the Edge

Abstract

In recent years the trend has been to connect any device to the internet to remotely sense or actuate objects, a concept called "Internet of Things". Forecasts predict billions of devices to be deployed and connected in the coming years. To make such large scale deployments feasible, existing network infrastructure has to be reused as much as possible. The IP protocol is essential for todays internet and therefore must be supported by IoT devices to provide connectivity with traditional internet-capable devices. However applying the traditional TCP/IP stack to those networks is a challenge because they must typically operate with constrained resources. To achieve IP connectivity within low-power wireless multi-hop networks (WSN), current industry standards rely on routing within the WSN. Such routing-based networks have been shown to perform poorly in scenarios with mobile devices. An IoT network stack which supports reliable webservice-like interactions between traditional internet-capable devices and mobile IoT devices is needed. Synchronous transmissions based on Glossy offer promising performance for mobile scenarios: 1. up to 99.99 % reliability, 2. fast network floods, 3. great mobility support because no topology-dependent state is present. This thesis proposes to leverage the mobility support of synchronous transmissions and combine it with the exibility of IP in an application-independent way. In this document the design and implementation of a proof-of-concept of such a network stack is presented. This stack shows a much improved mobility support compared to RPL, the routing protocol used by most current IoT standards. These results should motivate further research in synchronous transmissions for IoT which will hopefully lead to a standardized general-purpose protocol.