Optimized traffic engineering in Software Defined Wireless Network based IoT (SDWN-IoT): State-of-the-art, research opportunities and challenges

Wireless networks have been in focus since the last few decades due to their indispensable role in the future generation networks like the Internet of Things (IoT). However, the associated challenges in wireless network implementation such as distance, line-of-sight, interference, weather, power issues, etc., affect the performance adversely. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a future generation networking technology and has been proven to alleviate the performance challenges in the existing wireless IoT networks. It helps to evolve the wireless IoT domain in the form of Software Defined Wireless Network based IoT (SDWN-IoT). Traffic Engineering (TE) has been part of traditional network designs since long back, to improve the performance of the communication networks. However, its more optimized forms and their usefulness in SDWN-IoT networks have been under active investigation. This work explores the existing literature related to the major types of SDWN-IoT networks namely, Software Defined Wireless Sensor Network based IoT (SDWSN-IoT) and Software Defined Wireless Mesh Network based IoT (SDWMN-IoT). Additionally, the article also draws some useful inferences, and compares respective contributions and shortcomings. Finally, various research opportunities and challenges have been discussed with respect to the SDWSN-IoT and SDWMN-IoT networks.