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Networking Working Group A. Brandt
Internet-Draft Zensys
Intended status: Informational JP. Vasseur
Expires: January 7, 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc
July 6, 2007
Home Automation Routing Requirement in Low Power and Lossy Networks
draft-brandt-rl2n-home-routing-reqs-01
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Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007).
Abstract
This document presents the home control and automation application
specific requirements for Routing in Low power and Lossy Networks
(RL2N). In a modern home, a high number of wireless devices are used
for a wide set of purposes. Examples include lighting control
modules, heating control panels, light sensors, temperature sensors,
gas/water leak detector, motion detectors, video surveillance,
healthcare systems and advanced remote controls. Because such
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devices only cover a limited radio range, multi-hop routing is often
required. Such devices are usually highly constrained in terms of
resources such as battery and memory and operate in unstable
environments. The aim of this document is to specify the routing
requirements for networks comprising such constrained devices in a
home network environment.
Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
Table of Contents
1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Home automation applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1. Turning off the house . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Moving a remote control around . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3. Adding a new lamp module to the system . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3.1. Register lamp with portable remote control . . . . . . 4
3.3.2. Register lamp with central light controller; then
place lamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3.3. Register lamp outlet and wall switch with light
controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.4. Remote video surveillance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.5. Healthcare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.6. Alarm systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Unique requirements of home automation applications . . . . . 6
4.1. Support of groupcast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.2. Node constrained Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.3. Support of Mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.4. Scalability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.5. Convergence Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.6. Delay Tolerant Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.7. Manageability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. Traffic pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6. Open issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
9. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 11
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1. Terminology
L2N: Low power and Lossy Network.
RL2N: Routing in Low power and Lossy Networks.
2. Introduction
This document presents the home control and automation application
specific requirements for Routing in Low power and Lossy Networks
(RL2N). In a modern home, a high number of wireless devices are used
for a wide set of purposes. Examples include lighting control
modules, heating control panels, light sensors, temperature sensors,
gas/water leak detector, motion detectors, video surveillance,
healthcare systems and advanced remote controls. Basic home control
modules such as wall switches and plug-in modules may be turned into
an advanced home automation solution via the use of an IP-enabled
application reading wall switches, motion sensors, light sensors,
rain sensors, and so on.
Because such devices only cover a limited radio range, multi-hop
routing is often required. These devices are usually highly
constrained in term of resources such as battery and memory and
operate in unstable environments. Persons moving around in a house,
opening or closing a door or starting a vacuum cleaner affect
reception of weak radio signals. Reflection and absorption may cause
a reliable connection to turn unreliable for a period of time and
then being reusable again, thus the term "lossy".
Section 3 describes a few typical use cases for home automation
applications. Section 4 discusses the routing requirements for
networks comprising such constrained devices in a home network
environment. These requirements may be overlapping requirements
derived from other application-specific requirements documents or as
listed in [I-D.culler-rl2n-routing-reqs].
3. Home automation applications
Home automation applications represent a special segment of networked
wireless devices with its unique set of requirements. To facilitate
the requirements discussion in Section 4, this section lists a few
typical use cases of home automation applications. New applications
are being developed at a high pace and this section does not mean to
be exhaustive.
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3.1. Turning off the house
Using the direct analogy to an electronic car key, a house owner may
stand at the gate and activate the "leaving home" function from his/
her electronic house key, mobile phone, etc. For the sake of visual
impression, all lights should turn off at the same time. At least,
it should appear to happen at the same time. A well-known problem in
home automation is the "popcorn effect": Lamps are turned on one at a
time, at a rate so slow that it is clearly visible. Obviously, this
mostly apply to very low bandwidth RF systems. Some existing home
automation solutions use a clever mix of a "subnet groupcast" message
with no acknowledgement and no forwarding before sending acknowledged
singlecast messages to each lighting device. Broadcast packets
cannot be used for this since some lights should stay on (thus
traditional IP multicast cannot be used for such applications). The
light controller forms the groups and decides which light modules
should receive "turn-off" or "turn-on" requests.
3.2. Moving a remote control around
Advanced multi-function remote control may be used for dimming the
light in the dining room while eating, turning up the music while
doing the dishes in the kitchen and then, later on, turn lights down
and start a DVD in the home theater. The music is stopped at the
same time. Reaction must appear to be instant (within a few hundreds
of milliseconds) even when the remote control has moved to a new
location. Devices that needed routing to be reached before may be
accessible directly now and vice versa. A remote control is a
typical example of mobile device in a home network.
3.3. Adding a new lamp module to the system
This apparently simple action may be addressed in a number of ways,
depending on philosophy. The main issue is that the small-size, low-
cost modules may have no user interface except for a single button.
Thus, an automated inclusion process is needed for light controllers
to find new modules.
3.3.1. Register lamp with portable remote control
A remote control may control all lamps in the house. The new lamp
module is powered at its final location. A discovery mechanism
(potentially based on a broadcast-based protocol) makes the remote
control discover the new module within direct range. The user sets
up rules in the remote control for control of the lamp module. The
lamp module being powered up at the final location triggers routing
update. But because the (portable) remote control goes to sleep just
after the last communication, the routers cannot determine the
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location of the remote control by probing for it.
3.3.2. Register lamp with central light controller; then place lamp
In this scenario a central light controller controls all lamps in the
house. The new lamp module is powered within direct range of the
light controller. A discovery (potentially based on a broadcast-
based protocol) makes the light controller discover the new module.
The user sets up rules in the light controller for control of the
lamp module. Then the lamp module is placed at its final location.
The lamp module being powered up at the final location causes routers
to update routes.
3.3.3. Register lamp outlet and wall switch with light controller
In this scenario, a central light controller is still used to
controls all lamps in the house. It is practical to mount an outlet
and get it registered at the same time. The same applies to wall
switches. The wall switch may be out of direct range of the lamp
module. At least two scenarios can be envisioned:
3.3.3.1. Installer controller used to set up rules
A special portable controller is used to first discover the lamp
outlet and the wall switch locally, i.e. within direct reach of their
respective locations. Then rules are set up in the light controller
for the new lamp outlet and wall switch. The lamp module being
powered up at the final location triggers routing updates.
3.3.3.2. Global discovery
The lamp outlet and wall switch devices announce themselves to the
network. If already armed for an inclusion, routers carry the
announcement to the light controller. Then rules are set up in the
light controller for the new lamp outlet and wall switch. The lamp
module being powered up at the final location triggers routing
updates.
3.4. Remote video surveillance
Remote video surveillance is a fairly classic application for Home
networking providing the ability for the end user to get a video
stream from a Web Cam reached via the Internet, which can either be
triggered by the end-user that has received an alarm from a movement
sensor, smoke detector or that simply wants to check the home status
via video. Note that in the former case, more than likely, there
will be a form of inter-device communication: indeed, upon detecting
some movement in the home, the movement sensor may send a request to
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the light controller to turn-on the lights, to the Web Cam to start a
video stream that would then be directed to the end user (cell phone,
PDA) via the Internet. By contrast with other application where for
example a large number of L2N devices such as industrial sensors
where the data would mainly be originated by sensor to a sink and
vice versa, in such scenario there is a direct inter-device
communication between L2N devices.
3.5. Healthcare
This section will be documented in further revision of this document.
3.6. Alarm systems
This section will be documented in further revision of this document.
4. Unique requirements of home automation applications
Home automation applications have a number of specific requirements
related to the set of home networking applications and the perceived
operation of the system.
4.1. Support of groupcast
Some home automation systems require low-level addressing of a group
of nodes in the same subnet without any prior creation of multicast
groups, simply carrying a list of recipients in the subnet.
The routing protocol MUST support multicast routing with various
scopes: local subnet, all devices. In other words, the routing
protocol MUST provide the ability to route a packet toward a single
device (unicast), a set of devices (also referred to as "groupcast"
in this document) or all devices (multicast) in the house.
The support of unicast, groupcast and multicast also has an
implication on the addressing scheme and are outside the scope of
this document that focusses on the routing requirements aspects.
Note: with IP Multicast, signalling mechanisms are used by a
receivers to join a group and the sender does not necessarily know
the receivers of the group. What is required is the ability to
address a group of receivers known by the sender even if the
receivers do not need to know that they have been grouped by the
sender (requesting each individual node to join a multicast group
would be very impractical).
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4.2. Node constrained Routing
Simple battery-powered nodes such as movement sensors on garage doors
and rain meters may not be able to assist in routing. Depending on
the node type, the node never listens at all, listens rarely or makes
contact on demand to a pre-configured target node. Attempting to
communicate to such nodes may require long time before getting a
response.
Other battery-powered node may have the capability to participate to
the routing protocol but it may be preferable to choose a
(potentially longer) route via non battery powered devices or via
battery powered that have more energy.
The routing protocol MUST support constained based routing taking
into account node properties (CPU, memory, level of energy).
4.3. Support of Mobility
In a home environment, although the majority of devices are fixed
devices, there is still a variety of mobile devices: for example a
multi-purpose remote control is likely to move. Another example of
mobile devices is wearable healthcare devices.
The routing protocol MUST provide mobility with convergence time
within a few hundreds of milli-seconds.
4.4. Scalability
Looking at the number of wall switches, power outlets, sensor of
various nature, video equipments and so on in a modern house, it
seems quite realistic that hundreds low power devices may form a home
automation network in a fully populated "smart" home. Moving towards
professional building automation, the number of such devices may be
on the order of several thousands.
Thus the routing protocol MUST be highly scalable supporting a large
number of devices (at least a few hundreds of devices).
4.5. Convergence Time
Home automation is clearly an L2N subject to various instability due
to signal strength variation. Furthermore, as the number of (battery
powered) devices increases, the probability of node failures also
increases. In all cases, response time of the order of a few
hundreds of milliseconds are required, implying that the routing
protocol MUST converge (provide alternate routes upon link or node
failure) within a few hundreds of milliseconds.
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4.6. Delay Tolerant Networks
TBD.
4.7. Manageability
The ability of the home network to support auto-configuration is of
the utmost importance. Indeed, most end users will not have the
expertise and the skills to perform advanced configuration and
troubleshooting. Thus the routing protocol designed for home L2N
MUST provide a set of features including 0 configuration of the
routing protocol for a new node to be added to the network.
Furthermore, a misbehaving node MUST NOT have a global impact on the
routing protocol. The routing protocol SHOULD support the ability to
isolate a misbehaving node thus preserving the correct operation of
overall network.
5. Traffic pattern
Depending on the philosophy of the home network, wall switches may be
configured to directly control individual lamps or alternatively, all
wall switches send control commands to a central lighting control
computer which again sends out control commands to relevant light
devices. In a distributed system, the traffic tends to be any-to-
many. In a centralized system, it is a mix of any-to-one and one-to-
many.
A centralized system may benefit from a tree topology routing
strategy; having the central light controller close to the root.
A tree topology may prove inefficient for nodes in a distributed
system. A direct path from sender to receiver may be significantly
shorter than a path following the tree. A shorter path means lower
latency and less air-time use in a wireless media. Thus, routers
MUST provide efficient any-to-many routing and MUST also support any-
to-any routing without having to transit via a central point (e.g.
tree root) which would unavoidably lead to sub-optimal path in term
of latency and energy consumption.
6. Open issues
Other items to be addressed in further revisions of this document
include:
* Mobility and traffic pattern,
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* Load Balancing (Symmetrical and Asymmetrical),
* Security.
7. IANA Considerations
This document includes no request to IANA.
8. Security Considerations
TBD
9. Acknowledgements
10. References
10.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
10.2. Informative References
[I-D.culler-rl2n-routing-reqs]
Vasseur, J. and D. Cullerot, "Routing Requirements for
Low-Power Wireless Networks",
draft-culler-rl2n-routing-reqs-00 (work in progress),
July 2007.
Authors' Addresses
A Brandt
Zensys
Emdrupvej 26
Copenhagen, Denmark DK-2100
Email: abr@zen-sys.com
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JP Vasseur
Cisco Systems, Inc
1414 Massachusetts Avenue
Boxborough, MA 01719
USA
Email: jpv@cisco.com
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