Towards Secure Internet of Things Communication Through Trustworthy RPL Routing Protocols

• Published in: International journal of advanced computer science & applications Vol. 15; no. 12
• Main Author: LI, Rui
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: West Yorkshire Science and Information (SAI) Organization Limited 2024
• Subjects: Adaptability; Communication; Computer science; Cybersecurity; Data exchange; Data integrity; Data transmission; Energy consumption; Energy efficiency; Internet of Things; Network security; Routing (telecommunications); Smart cities; Trust; Trustworthiness
• ISSN: 2158-107X; 2156-5570
• DOI: 10.14569/IJACSA.2024.0151248

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network of connected objects for autonomous data exchange and processing. With the increasing growth in IoT, ensuring data transmission integrity and security is essential, as data is subject to many attacks. Currently, the routing protocol for low-power lossy networks is RPL and finds wide deployment in IoT deployments. It also provides a framework to define characteristics related to low-power consumption and resilience to specific routing attacks. RPL trust-based routing protocols improve RPL security by introducing a threshold for Minimum Acceptable Trust, permitting only trusted nodes with a sufficient level of obtained trust to participate in routing. This mechanism is designed to reduce malicious activities and to establish secure communications. This paper will provide an overall review of trustworthy RPL routing methods in IoT and discuss the trust metrics of these approaches and their limitations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey focusing on trust-based RPL protocols in IoT, offering valuable insights into the performance of protocols and possible improvements.