UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Whisper: Programmable and Flexible Control on Industrial IoT Networks

Municio, E; Marquez-Barja, J; Latré, S; Vissicchio, S; (2018) Whisper: Programmable and Flexible Control on Industrial IoT Networks. Sensors , 18 (11) 10.3390/s18114048. Green open access

[thumbnail of Municio_sensors-18-04048.pdf]
Preview
Text
Municio_sensors-18-04048.pdf - Published Version

Download (737kB) | Preview

Abstract

Software Defined Networking (SDN) centralizes network control to improve network programmability and flexibility. Contrary to wired settings, it is unclear how to support SDN in low power and lossy networks like typical Internet of Things (IoT) ones. Challenges encompass providing reliable in-band connectivity between the centralized controller and out-of-range nodes, and coping with physical limitations of the highly resource-constrained IoT devices. In this work, we present Whisper, an enabler for SDN in low power and lossy networks. The centralized Whisper controller of a network remotely controls nodes' forwarding and cell allocation. To do so, the controller sends carefully computed routing and scheduling messages that are fully compatible with the protocols run in the network. This mechanism ensures the best possible in-band connectivity between the controller and all network nodes, capitalizing on an interface which is already supported by network devices. Whisper's internal algorithms further reduce the number of messages sent by the controller, to make the exerted control as lightweight as possible for the devices. Beyond detailing Whisper's design, we discuss compelling use cases that Whisper unlocks, including rerouting around low-battery devices and providing runtime defense to jamming attacks. We also describe how to implement Whisper in current IoT open standards (RPL and 6TiSCH) without modifying IoT devices' firmware. This shows that Whisper can implement an SDN-like control for distributed low power networks with no specific support for SDN, from legacy to next generation IoT devices. Our testbed experiments show that Whisper successfully controls the network in both the scheduling and routing plane, with significantly less overhead than other SDN-IoT solutions, no additional latency and no packet loss.

Type: Article
Title: Whisper: Programmable and Flexible Control on Industrial IoT Networks
Location: Switzerland
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3390/s18114048
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.3390/s18114048
Language: English
Additional information: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).
Keywords: 6TiSCH, Internet of Things (IoT), RPL, SDN, Whisper
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10063477
Downloads since deposit
71Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item