An Extended Software-Defined Approach for Reprogramming Low-end IoT Devices

The usage of the Software-Defined Sensor Networks (SD-WSNs) as support for applications of the Internet of Things (IoT) has been the focus of recent research to reduce the complexity of configuration and management. This simplification allows greater flexibility for the configuration of these networks in operating time. However, although more flexible than traditional approaches, the existing SD-WSN architectures found in the literature have limitations mainly with regard to the reprogramming of devices in operating time. In this article, we propose a novel approach called Extended Software-Defined Wireless Sensor Network (ESD-WSN), in which the concept of the SDNs is extended to the application layer allowing the reprogramming of low-end devices in operation time without the need for firmware update. The proposed architecture was validated by simulation and an experimental study using very constrained low-end devices. The simulation/experimental results showed the effectiveness, flexibility, and efficiency of the proposal.