Software-Defined Networking Applied in Tactical Networks: Problems, Solutions and Open Issues

Robust and secure communication systems are essential for military operations but the ever-changing scenarios, heterogeneous devices and dense environment of Tactical Networks (TN) make it challenging to fulfill the requirements. Currently, the literature has shown that Software-defined Networking (SDN) has the potential to improve network management and control, helping to overcome some of these issues. But the application of SDN in TNs is not trivial. Therefore, in order to understand the current problems faced in Software-defined Tactical Networks (SDTN), we conducted a literature review focused on the current problems and solutions, aiming to identify open issues in SDTN. Therefore, we created four main problem categories (i.e. performance, availability, security, and robustness), describing the proposed solutions to handle these issues as well as discussing the approaches, test environments, and the reproducibility of these solutions.