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A simulation environment for software defined wireless networks with legacy devices

Publication . Sousa, Daniela; Sargento, Susana; Luís, Miguel

The adoption of Software Defined Networks (SDNs) in a Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) could present several benefits, such as adaptability and performance increase. However, to assess this possibility, a simulation tool may be necessary to test new protocols and solutions in a large combination of scenarios and traffic patterns, without the need of real equipment. Unfortunately, few tools are available for wireless SDNs, and none have the ability to also support MANETs with multiple radio access technologies. While NS-3 has the ability to simulate heterogeneous MANETs, it does not support wireless OpenFlow capable devices or wireless OpenFlow channels. In this work we present a simulation environment that, besides creating an ad-hoc data plane, enables the possibility of creating wireless hybrid SDN devices capable of connecting to legacy devices, alongside with an LTE OpenFlow channel connected to an external SDN Controller (RYU). Results show that the simulation environment supports large networks with both legacy and SDN devices, although these will bear an effective running time higher than their simulation time. Moreover, when comparing to an OLSR-only network, the proposed network (with a basic path search metric) has the same or higher performance.

2022-10Conference object

Open access

Hybrid wireless network with SDN and legacy devices in ad-hoc environments

Publication . Sousa, Daniela; Sargento, Susana; Luís, Miguel

On temporary events, like concerts or emergency scenarios, where a communication infrastructure may not be sufficient or even present, networks can be built in a spontaneous way with the available network elements and radio access technologies, to support proper communication and data access. However, these ad-hoc networks, without a centralized view, can be inefficient when compared to a detached centralized control approach like in Software Defined Networks (SDNs). Moreover, SDNs can bring several advantages to these environments, such as adaptability and performance increase, despite not supporting wireless interfaces. However, in these scenarios, not all nodes are able to support SDN. This paper proposes a Spontaneous Heterogeneous Wireless Software Defined Network with a hybrid approach that is able to opportunistically use all available elements that may compose the network, regardless of whether they are legacy or SDN nodes. The proposed approach is tested in several scenarios with a different ratio of legacy to SDN nodes. We conclude that the network is able to work with hybrid nodes, and that when more Hybrid SDN (H-SDN) devices are used to forward packets, the network performance increases or is maintained when compared to a pure ad-hoc solution.

2022-11Journal article

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