Simulation-Based Evaluation of RPL for Multi-Hop Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

The Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) is the standard routing framework for the Internet of Things (IoT). This paper investigates the performance of RPL in multihop Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) by comparing Grid and Elliptical node deployments. Using a MATLAB-based simulation environment, this paper evaluated Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Throughput, and Latency across varying node densities (8 to 40 nodes). Our results indicate that Grid topologies consistently outperform Elliptical deployments in terms of reliability and latency due to more uniform rank distribution and optimized Expected Transmission Count (ETX) paths.