Introduction

The goal of most Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is to send sensor values to some kind of backend or cloud. To do so, the data needs to be send to some gateway that connects the local WSN to the internet.

Depending on the protocols used for the WSN, different approaches can be used to route the traffic through the gateway.

Task

Two different approaches shall be considered by which a gateway can establish a connection between a backend server and the sensor nodes of a WSN. The simplest approach is to use IPv6 (6Lowpan) within the WSN, which only requires the gateway to act as an IPv6 router. Another approach is to use a lightweight protocol for the WSN that only supports a very limited address space. In this case, a translation from the lightweight protocol to IPv6 and vice versa must be implemented for the gateway. In particular, the addresses of the nodes must be converted. To achieve this, the gateway must hold corresponding translation tables, which need to be variable to ensure a dynamic network.

Both approaches should be implemented in RIOT OS. The first approach is already implemented and only needs to be configured. Subsequently, the performance of the two approaches should be compared for different metrics and scenarios. The definition of those metrics and scenarios is also part of the task.

If you are interested just contact Jan Schlichter to discuss further details.