On reliable and secure RPL (routing protocol low-power and lossy networks) based monitoring and surveillance in oil and gas fields

Wadhaj, Isam

Abstract

Different efforts have been made to specify protocols and algorithms for the successful operation of the Internet of things Networks including, for instance, the Low Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) and Linear Sensor Networks (LSNs). Into such efforts, IETF, the Internet Engineering Task Force, created a working group named, ROLL, to investigate the requirement of such networks and devising more efficient solutions. The effort of this group has resulted in the specification of the IPv6 Routing Protocol for LLNs (RPL), which was standardized in 2012. However, since the introduction of RPL, several studies have reported that it suffers from various limitations and weaknesses including scalability, slow convergence, unfairness of load distribution, inefficiency of bidirectional communication and security, among many others. For instance, a serious problem is RPL’s under-specification of DAO messages which may result in conflict and inefficient implementations leading to a poor performance and scalability issues. Furthermore, RPL has been found to suffer from several security issues including, for instance, the DAO flooding attack, in which the attacker floods the network with control messages aiming to exhaust network resources. Another fundamental issue is related to the scarcity of the studies that investigate RPL suitability for Linear Sensor Networks (LSN) and devising solution in the lieu of that.

Motivated by these observations, the publications within this thesis aim to tackle some of the key gaps of the RPL by introducing more efficient and secure routing solutions in consideration of the specific requirements of LLNs in general and LSNs as a special case. To this end, the first publication proposes an enhanced version of RPL called Enhanced-RPL aimed at mitigating the memory overflow and the under-specification of the of DAOs messages. Enhanced-RPL has shown significant reduction in control messages overhead by up to 64% while maintaining comparable reliability to RPL. The second publication introduces a new technique to address the DAO attack of RPL which has been shown to be effective in mitigating the attack reducing the DAO overhead and latency by up to 205% and 181% respectively as well as increasing the PDR by up to 6% latency. The third and fourth publications focus on analysing the optimal placement of nodes and sink movement pattern (fixed or mobile) that RPL should adopt in LSNs. It was concluded based on the results obtained that RPL should opt for fixed sinks with 10 m distance between deployed nodes.

Citation

Wadhaj, I. On reliable and secure RPL (routing protocol low-power and lossy networks) based monitoring and surveillance in oil and gas fields. (Thesis by Publication). Edinburgh Napier University

• Thesis Type: Thesis by Publication
• Deposit Date: Mar 22, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 28, 2023
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17869/enu.2022.3055651
• Award Date: Aug 2, 2022