Alexander Aring

The WPANKit is a ptxdist based Open-Source 6LoWPAN Board Support Package (BSP). The main focus is to provide a software development kit for the linux-wpan project. The linux-wpan project aims to implement a 6LoWPAN inside the mainline Linux kernel.

This talk will present the WPANKit: An Open-Source Linux BSP to develop 6LoWPAN IoT applications. It contains support for various common platforms such Raspberry Pi's and Beaglebones. Additional components like the openlabs 802.15.4 transceiver SPI transceiver or BTLE USB dongles gives you a getting started platform into the Linux 6LoWPAN world.

The WPANKit will directly build a current mainline 6LoWPAN kernel, which is the official bluetooth-next tree. This is important, because the mainline 6LoWPAN development is still much in development. Additional the WPANKit offers a large of userspace IoT software collection e.g. tshark for sniffing network traffic, libcoap, etc. On top of this BSP you can develop your IoT application, setting up a Border-Router or help at the current mainline 6LoWPAN Linux-kernel development.

Through the power of ptxdist you can easily add new own packages for cross-compiling. As well we accept patches to integrate new software into the official WPANKit repository, so we getting more and more new IoT capable software into the WPANKit which can be used by other ptxdist users.

Many patches found their way into the mainline Linux kernel since the last talk about the state of IEEE 802.15.4 and 6LoWPAN at FOSDEM 2014.

This presentation will outline what changes were done, with a focus on the 802.15.4 subsystem. The architecture of the subsystem has been reworked to be more similar to the 802.11 wifi stack; in addition, this lecture will explain new internal kernel frameworks and the new "wpan" userspace tool which is based on "iw" and give an outlook towards upper layer protocol such as 6LoWPAN.

This talk will begin with a demo to show the fixed changes according the last FOSDEM talk. Mainly these are the fragmentation and UDP fixes. Demo for fragmentation will be a simple "ping6" example with high payload between two Linux nodes. Another demo for UDP fixes will be a simple "netcat" example between Linux and contiki nodes. During the demo applications wireshark is running for confirm the working connection. Additional the demo will show the new userspace tool.

After that the presentation will start with information about general project information like project name change and new mailinglist address. Moreover the talk explain new internal kernel frameworks for introducing new userspace interfaces. At last future work will be show.

Rest of time is to start a Q&A with the audience.

At the moment the most common solution to bring Linux embedded devices into the Internet of Things world requires a gateway or border router device. These devices use a separate IEEE 802.15.4/6LoWPAN Stack from ContikiOS, TinyOS, etc.

The somewhat misnamed linux-zigbee project aims to implement the IEEE 802.15.4/6LoWPAN functionality (but not ZigBee) inside the Linux kernel so that you can bring a Linux machine into the Internet of Things world easily. The required hardware is an IEEE 802.15.4 radio frequency module which is typically connected via SPI or USB. On top of the 6LoWPAN stack you can run any IPv6 userspace software.

The main goal of the linux-zigbee project is to support the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer with 6LoWPAN on top in Linux kernel. Without linux-zigbee, a gateway or border router device running a separate IEEE 802.15.4/6LoWPAN stack was required. These devices are connected via ethernet, SLIP or USB-RNDIS to Linux. We want to bring the IEEE 802.15.4/6LoWPAN functionality into the Linux kernel which makes unnecessary to run a different stack on a separate device.

The project started in 2008 and part of the work have already been included in the Linux kernel. At the moment the Linux Kernel supports various IEEE 802.15.4 radio frequency modules which are typically connected via SPI or USB. With the project's userspace tools you can setup a WPAN interface with a virtual LoWPAN interface on top. This LoWPAN interface translates an IPv6 header to a 6LoWPAN header and vice versa.

In the last year the 6LoWPAN implementation in Linux became more RFC compliant so communication in a heterogeneous network becomes possible. The IEEE 802.15.4 stack only supports data frames right now. The 6LoWPAN stack supports IPHC, UDP compression/uncompression and fragmentation at the moment. A limited RPL python implementation was released which adds a basic support of Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks. The libcoap library adds support to run CoAP applications in userspace.

There is a draft for supporting 6LoWPAN on Bluetooth. We are working with the Bluetooth community to support 6LoWPAN in Linux kernel. Another wish is to support RFC6775 for 6LoWPAN neighbor discovery optimizations which isn't implemented yet.

This talk is for developers who are interested in the actual state of IEEE 802.15.4 and the 6LoWPAN stack under Linux.