Abstract
This paper introduces a proof-of-concept IPv6 over low power wireless personal area network (6LoWPAN) testbed to study the integration of programmable network technologies in relaxed throughput and low-power Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Open source software and hardware platforms are used in the implemented testbed to increase the possibility of future network extension. The proposed architecture offers end-to-end connectivity via the 6LoWPAN gateway to integrate IPv6 hosts and the low data rate devices directly. Nowadays, software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) are the most promising technologies for dealing with the massive increase in machine-to-machine devices and achieving agile traffic. The developed approach in this paper is entitled tailored software defined-NFV (SD-NFV), which is aimed at reducing the end-to-end delay and improving the energy depletion in sensor nodes. Experimental scenarios of the implemented testbed are conducted using a simple sensing application and the obtained results indicate that the introduced approach is appropriate for constrained IoT devices. By utilizing SD-NFV scheme in 6LoWPAN network, the data delivery ratio increased by 5%–14%, the node operational time prolonged by 70%, the end-to-end latency for gathering sensor data minimized by $\approx 160$ %, and the latency for transmitting control messages to a specified node diminished by $\approx 63$ % when compared to a traditional (non SDN-enabled) 6LoWPAN network.
Highlights
The number of connected devices to the Internet is foreseeable to surpass the world’s projected population by 2021, with there being 1.5 devices per capita [1]
This paper distinguishes from our previous work [29] by the following main contributions: 1) This paper proposes SoftwareDefined Networking (SDN) controller based functionalities that are capable of accessing and updating the running processes on programmable sensor nodes by modifying sensor node properties on the fly and performing autonomous decisions; 2) Developing new packet forwarding procedure for the introduced packet format to minimize the latency in flow-table construction and reduce the delay during network discovery and data communication phases; 3) Minimizing path construction delay and performing address-independent source routing in 6LoWPAN networks by running concurrent virtualized procedures of 6LoWPAN protocol stack on the controller
A proof-of-concept real-time testbed has been implemented to study the impact of programmable network techniques (i.e. SDN and Network Function Virtualization (NFV)) on an IEEE 802.15.4-based sensor network (i.e. 6LoWPAN) with integrated cloud service
Summary
The number of connected devices to the Internet is foreseeable to surpass the world’s projected population by 2021, with there being 1.5 devices per capita [1]. Most of the M2M nodes are battery-powered and generate tremendous amounts of data, which have to be processed, stored, and presented in an interpretable form [6] These sensor nodes are deployed in many applications, such as healthcare monitoring, natural disaster relief, surveillance, smart cities and transportation. It ensures the interoperability of the sensor networks and the Internet by taking into account the constrained characteristics of the M2M sensor nodes regarding the limited processor, small memory footprint, and scarce energy source. The cloud-computing platform is another component set to help the IoT succeed It enables end-to-end service delivery for remote end-users to access the M2M sensor network application from anywhere.
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