Internet of Things – Contiki
We will look at the topic “Contiki”. Then, we shall go through various topics like what Contiki is, the communication components of Contiki, its functions, dynamic module loading, and the Cooja network simulator. Finally, we shall discuss IoT Contiki OS software applications and some of their features.
What is the IoT Contiki OS?
Contiki is a portable, open-source operating system specifically designed for IoT devices like wireless sensors, networking devices, and low-power microcontrollers. In addition, Contiki has various communication components like uIP, 6LoWPAN, Rime, and more.
Contiki is in high demand because of its lightweight and flexible design for IoT devices. The vision behind the Contiki operating system is to create a minimalistic running OS for huge deployment and fulfil the requirements of the smallest gadgets together.
In 2002, Adam Dunkels created Contiki. Developers from Texas Instruments, Atmel, Cisco, ENEA, SAP Labs, and Redwire have further developed it to make it what it is today.
Contiki became such a crowd puller because of its built-in TCP/IP stack and lightweight preemptive scheduling over an event-driven kernel, a very motivating feature for IoT.
Communication Components of Contiki
We saw that Contiki’s various communication components were one reason it became so famous. Let us take a look at the 6 communication components present inside the IoT Contiki operating system:
1. uIP
We all know that IoT devices have low power, and due to this, IoT devices can’t implement TCP/IP protocols due to very limited resources. This is where uIP comes to the rescue. It contains minimised components that are essential components for the TCP/IP stack.
2. uIPv6
As the name suggests, it offers an IPv6 networking connection and new internet communication capacities to the Contiki operating system. uIPv6 supports various IoT devices like sensors, actuators, light valves, etc., as it provides a larger address space.
3. Rime
This communication component provides a set of lightweight communication primitives used by IoT sensors. Rime was explicitly designed for low-cost wireless systems.
4. 6LoWPAN
The 6LoWPAN communication stack was designed to apply the internet protocol to low-power IoT devices. 6LoWPAN allows low-power devices with lesser processing capabilities to participate in IoT ecosystems. This communication component has the perfect characteristics that dominate the market, such as smart homes, sensors, and actuators.
5. CoAP
CoAp can be utilised with constrained nodes and constrained networks in IoT. Moreover, it is a web transfer protocol that is heavy for memory-constrained devices.
6. RPL
RPL communication is essentially an IPv6 routing protocol designed for lossy networks and low-power networks.
Functions of IoT Contiki OS
1. Process and Memory Management
The IoT Contiki operating system supports malloc(), a standard C programming memory allocation function that helps in memory block allocation. Protoheads are in C programming language, supporting the low system requirement and reducing the overhead of multithreading programming.
2. Communication Management
We already saw that the Contiki operating system supports the Ipv6 and Ipv4 communication stack implementations. It also includes other communication components like TCP, HTTP, and many more protocols.
3. File System Management
Every IoT device doesn’t need to have large and persistent memory storage such as flashes. However, the coffee file system offered by Contiki supports IoT devices with low memory. This file system is best suitable for devices with an external flash memory chip.
What is Dynamic Module Loading in Contiki?
Contiki OS supports the dynamic loading of programming modules to make programming easier. Currently, Contiki has 2 programming interfaces to load a program. They are ELF (Executable Linkable Format) and NEF (Native Executable Format). You can also write the dynamic module in the flash memory if you are using the coffee file system.
What is the Cooja network simulator in Contiki?
Contiki contains a network simulator named Cooja. It stimulates networks on nodes that support Contiki. The programming model of Contiki has several prototypes to run a small memory system remotely. These prototypes include multithreading to achieve low memory overhead as they are memory-efficient programs.
Software Applications of Contiki OS
Numerous applications are included in Contiki. For example, there is a lightweight browser and web servers, shell, calculators, telnet to manage devices remotely, email clients and users, vnc viewer, and many more applications.
However, if you want to develop an application, you can look for tools like the Cooja simulator. Contiki’s software package includes a UNIX-style debugging shell and an Operating System interface. In Contiki OS, measuring the power of various applications is also possible. As a result, it helps developers to make power-sensitive applications.
Features of IoT Contiki OS
Contiki offers lots of features. For example, it supports per-process optional preemptive multithreading, inter-process communication using message passing through events, and an optional GUI subsystem. Here are some more features of the IoT Contiki OS:
1. Contiki’s kernel is capable of multitasking.
2. Optional per-application multithreading.
3. Comes with protothreads.
4. Communication components.
5. Comes with Windows system and GUI.
6. Networked remote display using virtual network computing.
7. Has the world’s smallest web browser.
8. Provides us with serverdam Dunkels.
9. Includes a telnet client.
10. Cooja simulator.
Summary
As you have read, Contiki is a portable and open-source operating system specifically designed for IoT devices like wireless sensors, networking devices, and low-power microcontrollers. In this article, we looked at topics like what Contiki is, the communication components of Contiki, its functions, dynamic module loading, the Cooja network simulator, and more.