6LoWPAN Protocol Stack - Nikhil
6LoWPAN Protocol Stack - Nikhil
6LoWPAN protocol stack are comprises of 802.15.4 physical (PHY) and medium
access control (MAC) layer, adaptation layer, network layer, transport layer and
application layer.
The main difference between 6LoWPAN and OSI protocol stacks is the emergence
of adaptation layer. This layer is assumed to perform fragmentation/reassembly,
header compression and mesh addressing
6LoWPAN Physical Layer
Provides two services- PHY data service and PHY management
service interfacing to the physical layer management entity
(PLME) service access point (SAP) known as the PLME-SAP
Provides transmission of data packets across radio channel
Data Link Layer (MAC layer)Provides two services: the MAC data service and the MAC
management service interfacing to the MAC sub-layer
management entity (MLME) service access point (SAP)
(MLMESAP).
The MAC data service is to let the transmission and receiving of
MAC protocol data units (MPDU) across the PHY data service
Data frame-data transfer, beacon frame-generated by
coordinator for synchronization, Command frame-management
entity, acknowledgement frame-for acknowledgement
FCS field:
Frame Check Sequence (FCS) is 2 octets in length and contains a 16-bit ITU-T CRC
(Cyclic Redundancy Check).
Adaptation Layer
.
Has three primary elements1. Fragmentation and reassembly
IPv6 packet size over IEEE 802.15.4 is 1280 bytes .However, the
packet size is larger than IEEE 802.15.4 frame. In this condition,
IPv6 packet size unable to be encapsulated in one IEEE802.15.4
frame. 802.15.4 Protocol data units have variety of sizes. It
depends on the overhead occurred [8]. Maximum Transmission
Unit (MTU) for IEEE 802.15.4 is 127 bytes. This frame has 25
bytes, header, footer and addressing, overheads. In addition,
security header imposed by Link Layer adds 21 bytes overhead
when AES-CCM-128 is used. Due to this matter, one IPv6 that
need to be transmitted over IEEE 802.15.4 frame has to be
divided to more than 16 fragments
The fragmentation header is 4 or 5 bytes long and contains
datagram size (indicates size of the original datagram),
datagram tag (identifies all fragments of a particular datagram)
and
datagram offset (indicates the location of the fragment within the
datagram).
2. Header compression
The IEEE 802.15.4 frame which has a maximum packet size of
128 bytes; instead IPv6 header size is 40 bytes, User Datagram
Protocol (UDP) and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)
header sizes are both 4 bytes, fragmentation header add another
5 bytes overhead. Without compression, 802.15.4 is not possible
to transmit any payload effectively.
3. Routing
There are a number of existing routing protocols in 6LoWPAN
like:RPL, 6LoWPAN Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (LOAD),
Multipath based 6LoWPAN Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector
(MLOAD), Dynamic MANET On-Demand for 6LoWPAN Routing
(DYMO-Low), Hierarchical Routing (Hi-Low), Extended Hi-Low and
Sink Adhoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing (SAODV).