A Novel Energy Aware Routing Function for Internet of Things Networks

In recent years, there is a growing interest towards Wireless Sensor Networks(WSN) with the introduction of new application areas such as Industrial Internet, Smart Grid and Smart Cities. With these new application areas, a need has emerged to connect low power devices to Internet and to each other by utilising IPv6 technology. This has created a new networking concept named as Internet of Things (IoT). IoT networks consists of independent devices with globally accessible IPv6 addresses. These devices often connect to Internet via a central entity named as Border Router (BR) which implements a gateway between the low power IPv6 network and the Internet. Many applications in such IoT networks demand very low power operation and in many cases, the nodes in such networks are equipped with small batteries. Hence, keeping such a low power network operational as long as possible using limited energy resources poses a unique challenge for low power wireless networking community. This paper presents a novel energy aware routing algorithm which aims to extend network lifetime by balancing the energy consumption of the nodes within the wireless IoT network.