Hindawi Publishing Corporation

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

Volume 2016, Article ID 5153718, 2 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/5153718

Editorial
Advances on Software Defined Sensor,
Mobile, and Fixed Networks

Luis Javier García Villalba,1 Jun Bi,2 Anura P. Jayasumana,3

and Ana Lucila Sandoval Orozco1
1
The Complutense University, 28040 Madrid, Spain
2
Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
3
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1373, USA

Correspondence should be addressed to Luis Javier Garcı́a Villalba; javiergv@fdi.ucm.es

Received 13 March 2016; Accepted 14 March 2016

Copyright © 2016 Luis Javier Garcı́a Villalba et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons
Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.

1. Introduction resources, novel services, and enhanced mechanisms for

The continued development of microelectromechanical sys-
tems (MEMS) that continually record, process, and send
information has brought about a considerable increase in
the data traffic. In order to cover the increasing connectivity
needs, the new sensor and mobile devices use multiple
network infrastructures to send information (WiFi, 5G, LTE,
WSN, and Bluetooth, among others). This new intercon-
nected environment has led the origin of a new growing
market scenario based on services and applications. However,
the rigidity of actual network architectures, the dependency
on a specific manufacturer or service provider, and the
closed union between data and control planes in network
infrastructures have limited the development applications in
terms of scalability, mobility, security, energy efficiency, and
quality of service (QoS).
In this context, the novel concept of Software Defined
Networking (SDN) can help solve these limitations. SDN
allows the centralized control of the network behavior
through external software, separating the data and the
control plane in network devices. This new paradigm can
be extended to other network infrastructures, decoupling
the transmission and control plane in base stations, access
points, and wireless sensor agents. This new vision of software
defined heterogeneous network opens new opportunities to
share infrastructures and standardize interfaces, on-demand
services, network programmability, and optimization of
dynamic resource management. The present special issue
reflects the last advances on research in the following
fields: Software Defined Sensor Networks (SDSN), Software
Defined Mobile Networks (SDMN), Novel 5G, SDN and NFV
architectures, and integration of software defined technolo-
gies with traditional network architectures.
2. Related Works
M. M. Umar et al. presented a new hybrid routing pro-
tocol, named as State-Aware Link Maintenance Approach
(SALMA). SALMA is based on Dynamic Source Routing
(DSR) and Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocols.
The work also focuses on the activeness of nodes in the
network operations and defines three states of nodes, that is,
white, gray, and black. The work concludes that the proposed
protocol gives improvements in some quality of service
metrics like lower delay than DSR, lower routing overhead
than OLSR, and lesser energy consumption by the network
nodes.
P. Neves et al. proposed a novel EU H2020 SELFNET
management framework upon the Software Defined and
Virtualized Network paradigms. The SELFNET reference
architecture is divided into Infrastructure Layer, Virtualized
Network Layer, SON Control Layer, SON Autonomic Layer,
NFV Orchestration and Management Layer, and Access
2 International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

Layer. The present architecture is advancing in following the self-adaptability to environmental changes for WSNs. The
challenging key performance indicator of the fifth generation optimal matching rules in flow table are designed to curb
(5G) system, where the network infrastructure becomes the control signaling overhead and balance the distribution of
more heterogeneous and complex. The framework will assist data flows for achieving in-network fusion in data plane with
network operators to simplify the key management tasks guaranteed quality of service (QoS). Experiment results show
and save the man power. For example, SDN/NFV sensors that the proposed SDWSN prototype can effectively improve
that can monitor the network and SDN/NFV actuators that the energy efficiency and self-adaptability of environmental
can perform corrective and preventive actions to mitigate monitoring WSNs with QoS.
existing or potential network problems can be automatically
deployed. SELFNET aims to address three major network Luis Javier Garcı́a Villalba
management concerns, that is, providing self-protection Jun Bi
capabilities against distributed cyber-attacks, self-healing Anura P. Jayasumana
capabilities against network failures, and self-optimization Ana Lucila Sandoval Orozco
features to dynamically improve the performance of the
network and the QoE of the end users.
T.-W. Um et al. proposed Software Defined Networking-
(SDN-) based active content networking architecture for
future media environments. The proposed architecture aims
to provide customized delivery of various types of media
content in order to satisfy users’ demand and service require-
ments. To this end, the authors have developed an active
content processing model which provides in-network content
processing through service objects that are integral parts of
active content. The main benefits provided by the proposed
model are high flexibility and creativity to meet the evolving
future media environments.
J. Nightingale et al. introduce the SELFNET 5G project
and describe the video streaming use case that will be used
to demonstrate the self-optimizing capabilities of SELFNET’s
autonomic network management framework. SELFNET’s
framework will provide an advanced self-organizing network
(SON) underpinned by seamless integration of Software
Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualiza-
tion (NFV), and network intelligence. The self-optimization
video streaming use case is going beyond traditional quality
of service approaches to network management. A set of
monitoring and analysis components will facilitate a user-
oriented, quality of experience (QoE), and energy-aware
approach. Firstly, novel SON Sensors will monitor both
traditional network state metrics and new video and energy
related metrics. The combination of these low level met-
rics provides highly innovative health of network (HoN)
composite metrics. HoN composite metrics are processed
via autonomous decisions not only maintaining but also
proactively optimizing users’ video QoE while minimizing
the end-to-end energy consumption of the 5G network. This
contribution provided a detailed technical overview of this
ambitious use case.
R. Huang et al. presented a software defined WSN
(SDWSN) prototype to improve the energy efficiency and
adaptability of WSNs for environmental monitoring applica-
tions, taking into account the constraints of WSNs in terms of
energy, radio resources, and computational capabilities and
the value redundancy and distributed nature of data flows
in periodic transmissions for monitoring applications. The
design enables a reinforcement learning based mechanism
to perform value redundancy filtering and load-balancing
routing according to the values and distribution of data flows,
respectively, in order to improve the energy efficiency and