6LBR Slip Radio

Description

When 6LBR is used on a Linux platform it requires an external piece of hardware running the 802.15.4 radio. On this hardware runs a dedicated firmware implementing the communication protocol between the 6LBR linux process and the 802.15.4 radio. The data are transfered over UART or serial-usb.

By default, the MAC layer is located inside 6LBR process and the RDC layer is located in the slip-radio. The default MAC is CSMA and the default RDC is nullrdc, see below for more information.

Supported platform

The following platforms can be used as slip-radio :

• Telos Sky
• Zolertia Z1
• Redwire Econotag
• TI CC2538DK
• Nooliberry
• TRxEB /EXP5438

Other platforms could be easily added.

Attention: Z1 and CC2538DK slip-radio firmware is only available in maint_1.3.2 and develop branches. CC2538DK based slip-radio are not rebooted at startup nor disabled at shutdown.

How to build slip-radio

The source code is located in examples/ipv6/slip-radio in the 6LBR repository.

For example, to build a sky based slip-radio :

cd examples/ipv6/slip-radio
make TARGET=sky slip-radio.upload

Note: Zolertia Z1 and TI CC2538DK code is available only in the 1.3.2 maintenance branch or in the develop branch.

Change CSMA or RDC

The default configuration is to have the MAC layer in 6LBR, and the RDC layer on the slip-radio itself. The advantage is to not drown the slip link with too many messages from the RDC layer (nullrdc is not a problem, obviously, but ContikiMAC or Drowsie are).

The advantage of having CSMA on the Native side is to recover from lost or corrupted packet on a non reliable slip link.

To change the RDC on the slip-radio, you need to update NETSTACK_CONF_RDC
either update the project-conf.h file

#define NETSTACK_CONF_RDC   contikimac_driver

or on the make command line

make TARGET=xxx DEFINES=NETSTACK_RDC=contikimac_driver