Supporting stateless address auto-configuration in IP-based wireless sensor networks

IP-based Wireless Sensor Networks (IP-WSN) are envisioned to play an important role in the realization of pervasive environments. Comprised of hundreds or even thousands of nodes, these networks may never undergo pre-deployment address configuration. The stateless autoconfiguration capability is therefore essential to the spontaneity of such pervasive networks. Recently, several address autoconfiguration schemes have been proposed with their applications in sensor networks as well as in mobile ad-hoc networks. However, we argue that there is no singular scheme that meets the requirements of IP-WSN environments. In this paper, we discuss the requirements for stateless auto-configuration in IP-WSN and present a hierarchical duplicate address detection mechanism for IP-WSNs. In our solution we propose Duplication Address Detection (DAD) Resolver Proxy Agents (DRPA) to act as cache service for DAD resolver to localize the DAD procedure, in order to reduce the DAD overhead traffic. We also propose algorithms to make sure that the node executing DAD procedure is always connected to the nearest DRPA. Analytical results conclude that our architecture and algorithms help reducing the traffic overhead for DAD procedure, decrease the DAD time, and save nodes' energy considerably in IP-WSNs.