A comparative study on routing schemes of IP based wireless sensor network

As the world is moving towards the “Internet of Things” [1], Internet Protocol enabled wireless sensor network is becoming an important research area. In order to make it possible and to facilitate transmission of IPv6 packets over low powered networks, 6LoWPAN [9,11] has been introduced. 6LoWPAN incorporates an adaptation layer between network and data link layers. Two routing schemes are used in 6LoWPAN depending on which layer takes routing, forwarding decisions. If adaptation layer takes the decision, then it is called mesh under, whereas if the network layer is involved, then the scheme is route over. In this paper, we present a comparative study of these two schemes. Various performance metrics, such as average round-trip time delay, end to end delay and packet delivery ratio are compared and suitability of the two schemes are analyzed for a Sensor-Grid infrastructure. We also propose a technique which improves the route-over scheme. Our ultimate goal is to apply this Sensor-Grid infrastructure in health-care applications.