On Self-configuring IoT with Dual Radios: A Cross-Layer Approach

Abstract

Growing interest in emerging IoT applications provides a strong drive to release a plethora of communication radios from different standards, which are largely classified into short-range (IEEE 802.15.4) and long-range radios (IEEE 802.15.4g). In this paper, we propose a joint, self-configuring MAC and routing protocol, SEDA-Net, which aims at adaptively choosing the best configuration for communication coordination and data delivery, depending on different deployed topologies and external conditions. SEDA-Net is a combination of SEDA-MAC, SEDA-Routing, and Cross-Opt. SEDA-MAC and SEDA-Routing adaptively determine (i) the best radio configuration for communication coordination under duty-cycling and (ii) each node's next-hop over which radio and Cross-Opt jointly optimizes inter-coupled MAC and routing iteratively. SEDA-Net differs from prior approaches which are designed with static configurations of radios and/or mainly with the goal of throughput maximization for dual Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi/LTE setups. We implement SEDA-Net on Contiki OS and perform extensive simulations and experiments using a testbed in an office building. This testbed consists of 45 nodes equipped with a commercial platform, Firefly, having 2.4 GHz short-range and 920 MHz long-range radios. We demonstrate that energy efficiency quantified by the network lifetime increases by up to 2.1 times, compared to that of existing approaches.