Babel Multi-hop Routing for TinyOS Low-power Devices
Antoine Hauck, Peter Sollberger · Ubiquitous Computing Systems · 2011
Efficient routing in Wireless Mesh networks (WMN) with limited bandwidth is a challenging task, especially in networks where nodes have restricted resources. In such environments routing mechanisms should have a small footprint, low CPU usage and minimal routing overhead. If nodes are mobile, topology changes occur permanently, so the routing protocol has to converge fast and remain loop-free. Traditional routing protocols for IP-based wired networks have in many aspects been proven inadequate for WMNs. Therefore protocols, like Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV) and Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing, has evolved to overcome the difficulties of WMNs. One of the most recent is Babel, a proactive distance-vector protocol with reactive features based on DSDV and AODV. Due to its specific characteristics, Babel should be able to run efficiently on WMNs and low-power devices. A stable Babel routing daemon exists for Linux and Mac OS X. This Work in Progress paper outlines a simplified subset implementation of the Babel routing protocol without using IP, especially designed to fit into lowpower and hardware constrained wireless devices which are running TinyOS. Keywords-Wireless mesh networks; Routing protocols; Low power electronics; Embedded software;