Software-defined networking (SDN) is an emerging network design and management paradigm that offers a flexible way for reducing the complexity of the network management and configuration. SDN-based wireless sensor networks (SDWSNs) consist of a set of software-defined sensor nodes equipped with different types of sensors. In SDWSN, sensor node is able to conduct different sensing tasks according to the programs injected into it and functionalities of these nodes can also be dynamically configured by injecting different application-specific programs. SDWSNs adopt the characteristics of SDN and can provide energy efficient solutions for various problems such as topology management, sleep scheduling, routing, and localization, etc. This chapter discusses how to apply SDN model in the design of an energy-efficient protocol for wireless sensor networks and also presents an overview of SDN model proposed for wireless sensor networks and SDN-based resource management, routing, sleep scheduling algorithm, localization for SDWSNs. Finally, open research challenges are summarized.
TopIntroduction
The advancement in the Micro Electrical Mechanical System (MEMS) and wireless communication technologies has enhanced the scope of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in the different applications such as Smart Cities, Smart Grid, and Smart Environment etc (Akyildiz, 2002; Anastasi, 2009; Yick, 2008; Khan, 2016). A typical WSN consists of a set of sensor nodes and one or more sink nodes that are deployed over a monitoring area of interest in a structured or unstructured way (Khan, 2016). Wireless sensor nodes are generally operated by battery power thus requires an energy efficient operation to prolong the network lifetime.
In recent years, software defined networking (SDN) paradigm emerges as a new network design mechanism where control logic is decoupled from the network devices and leaving the network device with only data forwarding logic (Kreutz, 2015; Nunes, 2014; Jagadeesan, 2014; Bizanis, 2016; Jarraya, 2014; Olivier, 2015). This new paradigm offers various advantages over traditional paradigm such as energy efficient network operations, energy efficient resource allocations and flexible network management, multiple applications deployment and control over sensor nodes etc. (Haque, 2016; Gante, 2014; Luo, 2012; Zeng, 2013). The application of the SDN paradigm in the design of WSN emerges a new network called software defined Wireless Sensor Networks (SDWSNs). In SDWSN, most of the energy demanding operations such as routing decision, duty cycling, topology management, resource allocation, network coverage and connectivity planning etc. are migrated to the logically centralized SDN controllers, thus saves a lot of node energy (Kobo, 2017).