Debugging low-power and lossy wireless networks : a survey

Recent economic and technical advances in wireless communication have allowed the deployment of low-power and lossy wireless networks—LowPANs, potentially comprised of a large number of nodes to serve new types of applications. However, the resource-constrained nature of microsensor platforms together with the unreliability and low-bandwidth of low-power and lossy wireless links have increased the risk and occurrence of network failures. Unlike with traditional wireless networks and controlled pre-deployment simulations and laboratory setups, likely events such as node crashes, inefficient networking and environmental interferences can potentially freeze a network post deployment. A survey of existing tools and related work in debugging LowPANs is presented, to provide a comprehensive state of the art of debugging tools and techniques. We divide debugging tools in two categories, pre-deployment tools and post-deployment tools, and evaluate their performance and limitations. From this study, we discuss the challenges in debugging LowPANs, providing the main issues and requirements that LowPANs’ specific constraints impose on debugging tools, to help developers choose the appropriate tool for specific needs.