Energy consumption is a major challenge in IoT devices, which was aimed to be improved by employing energy-efficient Objective Functions (OF) in the structure of RPL routing protocol. Meanwhile, the majority of the existing OFs mainly perform the parent selection based on the gathered information from the routing layer. Nevertheless, based on our investigations, there exists a series of transmission operations in the MAC layer, which significantly affects the energy consumption in IoT devices. Therefore, in this paper we propose ELITE, an energy-efficient cross-layer OF, which introduces a novel routing metric, called Strobe per Packet Ratio (SPR). SPR indicates the number of transmitted strobes per packet due to Radio Duty Cycling (RDC) policies in the MAC layer. This newly defined metric, which has been designed to be coupled with asynchronous MAC protocols, could be differentiated node by node and based on the existing relative phase shift between the communicating nodes. In this regard, ELITE tries to select a path, which imposes less number of strobe transmissions to its nodes. According to the evaluation results, while ELITE could reduce the average amount of required strobes per packet by up to 25%, it can significantly improve the average amount of consumed energy in an IoT node by up to 39% compared to its counterpart OFs.

Due to the real-time requirements in several IoT applications, fog computing has emerged to overcome the long latency and other constraints of cloud computing. Due to the high probability of packet loss, energy limitation of IoT devices, and the external disturbances that may frequently occur on the fog infrastructure, the timing constraints of real-time tasks may be compromised. Therefore, the reliability of executing real-time tasks has always been a significant challenge in fog computing. In addition to the correct execution of the tasks, it is also important to execute them before their deadlines according to their real-time classification. State-of-the-art methods generally focus on the delay or functionality of tasks in fog computing systems. However, those methods do not widely focus on the reliability of tasks with real-time constraints in dynamic environments. In this article, a novel primary backup task assignment strategy based on machine learning (ReLIEF) is proposed to improve the reliability of fog-based IoT systems. To identify suitable nodes for the execution of the primary and backup tasks, ReLIEF employs a reinforcement learning (RL) approach, which has an outstanding performance in dynamic environments by establishing a balance between communication delay and workload on each fog device. Based on the simulations, our newly proposed technique has been able to reduce the amount of task dropping rate by up to 84% against the state of the art. Moreover, it is capable of balancing the workload distribution while increasing the reliability of the system by nearly 72% compared with its counterparts.

With the widespread use of IoT applications and the increasing trend in the number of connected smart devices, the concept of routing has become very challenging. In this regard, the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-power and Lossy Networks (PRL) was standardized to be adopted in IoT networks. Nevertheless, while mobile IoT domains have gained significant popularity in recent years, since RPL was fundamentally designed for stationary IoT applications, it could not well adjust with the dynamic fluctuations in mobile applications. While there have been a number of studies on tuning RPL for mobile IoT applications, but still there is a high demand for more efforts to reach a standard version of this protocol for such applications. Accordingly, in this survey, we try to conduct a precise and comprehensive experimental study on the impact of various mobility models on the performance of a mobility-aware RPL to help this process. In this regard, a complete and scrutinized survey of the mobility models has been presented to be able to fairly justify and compare the outcome results. A significant set of evaluations has been conducted via precise IoT simulation tools to monitor and compare the performance of the network and its IoT devices in mobile RPL-based IoT applications under the presence of different mobility models from different perspectives including power consumption, reliability, latency, and control packet overhead. This will pave the way for researchers in both academia and industry to be able to compare the impact of various mobility models on the functionality of RPL, and consequently to design and implement application-specific and even a standard version of this protocol, which is capable of being employed in mobile IoT applications.

Mobile portable embedded devices are becoming an integral part of our daily activities in the vision of Internet of Things (IoT). Nevertheless, due to lack of mobility support in the IPv6 routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (RPLs), which is standardized for multihop IoT infrastructures, providing reliable communications in terms of packet delivery ratio (PDR) in mobile IoT applications has become significantly challenging. While several studies tried to enhance the adaptability of RPL to network dynamics, their utilized routing metrics have prevented them from establishing long-lasting reliable paths. Furthermore, the stochastic parent replacement policy in the standard version of RPL has intensified this challenge. Aside from this, due to the existing tradeoff between reliability and power efficiency, most of the existing approaches have only concentrated on one of these concerns without paying attention to the other one. To address these issues, this article introduces ARMOR, a routing mechanism built upon RPL, which employs a novel mobility-aware routing metric, i.e., time to reside (TTR), and a corresponding parent replacement policy. According to the motion characteristics of the mobile objects, TTR provides an estimation of how long the nodes will be in the transmission range of each other. This enables ARMOR to select nodes, which provide longer connection period and consequently higher reliability. In comparison with the state of the art, while keeping the power consumption constant, ARMOR significantly improves the amount of PDR in the network by up to $2.5\times $ , while it enhances the reliability against the original version of this protocol by up to $4.2\times $ .

IoT has revolutionized various industries with interconnected smart embedded devices featuring sensors and actuators. However, providing a sustainable power supply for these devices is a significant hurdle. The finite lifespan of traditional batteries necessitates frequent replacements, leading to increased maintenance costs, downtime, and environmental concerns associated with battery disposal. Energy harvesting offers an admirable alternative by converting ambient energy into usable electrical energy, enabling IoT devices to operate autonomously and sustainably, reducing maintenance needs, and enhancing reliability. Despite their diversity, energy harvesters face common limitations such as variable energy availability, limited power output, and high initial costs. Recognizing these limitations is essential for informed decisions regarding their use in sustainable IoT applications and their communication performance. Due to the lack of a comprehensive and inclusive study in this context, this paper gives an extensive survey on energy-harvesting technologies and their applications in IoT. By drawing insights from over 400 recent publications, this paper first introduces a taxonomy by categorizing the existing technologies based on their energy sources into five general domains, i.e., photovoltaic, vibration and kinetic, radio frequency, thermoelectric, and chemical and biological. Then it expands this categorization into 11 subdomains and delves into the working principles of every technology. Besides surveying potential IoT applications, this comprehensive study covers simulation-facilitating mathematical models, pros, cons, and Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) modules for each harvesting technology. It also includes evaluative simulations to analyze their output power behavior, focusing on their impact on wireless communication performance. Finally, by discussing the existing research trends, the survey aims to provide informed decision-making and foster the development of innovative, sustainable IoT solutions for a green future.

Mixed-Criticality (MC) systems have emerged as an effective solution in various industries, where multiple tasks with various real-time and safety requirements (different levels of criticality) are integrated onto a common hardware platform. In these systems, a fault may occur due to different reasons, e.g., hardware defects, software errors or the arrival of unexpected events. In order to tolerate faults in MC systems, the re-execution technique is typically employed, which may lead to overrun of high-criticality tasks (HCTs), which necessitates the drop of low-criticality tasks (LCTs) or degrading their quality. However, frequent drops or relatively long execution times of LCTs (especially mission-critical tasks) are not always desirable and it may impose a negative impact on the performance, or the functionality of MC systems. In this regard, this article proposes a realistic MC task model and develops a design-time task-drop aware schedulability analysis based on the Earliest Deadline First with Virtual Deadline (EDF-VD) algorithm. According to this analysis and the proposed scheduling policy based on the new MC task model, in the high-criticality (HI) mode, when an HCT overruns and the system switches to the HI mode, the number of drops per LCT is prohibited from passing a predefined threshold. In addition, to guarantee the real-time constraints and safety requirements of MC tasks in the presence of faults (assuming transient faults in this article), a corresponding scheduling mechanism has been developed. According to the obtained results from an extensive set of simulations, which have been validated through a realistic avionic application, the proposed method improves the acceptance ratio by up to 43.9% compared to state-of-the-art.