A proxy-based passive duplicate address detection protocol for IPv6 wireless sensor networks

IPv6 addressing schemes for networks consisting of power constrained wireless sensor nodes require special consideration to reduce the time and traffic required for a node to join the network. Here we explore several existing models of IPv6 address allocation schemes for this use case. We offer a novel approach to reduce the chance of address duplication via a hierarchical manipulation of the host portion of the IPv6 address space, which represents each segment of the network leaving nodes a large segment of address space to generate a unique identifier portion. Overhead is further reduced though the application of a Passive Duplicate Address Detection scheme, which allows nodes to configure an address but postpone duplication check until traffic traverses the network and is sent out through the gateway.