CluFlow: Cluster-based Flow Management in Software-Defined Wireless Sensor Networks
Qingzhi Liu (Eindhoven University of Technology)
Tanir Ozcelebi (Eindhoven University of Technology)
Long Cheng (University College Dublin)
F.A. Kuipers (TU Delft - Embedded Systems)
Johan Lukkien (Eindhoven University of Technology)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Software-defined networking (SDN) is a cornerstone of next-generation networks and has already led to numerous advantages for data-center networks and wide-area networks, for instance in terms of reduced management complexity and more fine-grained traffic engineering. However, the design and implementation of SDN within wireless sensor networks (WSN) have received far less attention. Unfortunately, because of the multi-hop type of communication in WSN, a direct reuse of the wired SDN architecture could lead to excessive commu- nication overhead. In this paper, we propose a cluster-based flow management approach that makes a trade-off between the granularity of monitoring by an SDN controller and the communication overhead of flow management. A network is partitioned into clusters with a minimum number of border nodes. Instead of having to handle the individual flows of all nodes, the SDN controller only manages incoming and outgoing traffic flows of clusters through border nodes. Our proof-of- concept implementations in software and hardware show that, when compared with benchmark solutions, our approach is significantly more efficient with respect to the number of nodes that must be managed and the number of control messages exchanged.