Architectural Design, Improvement, and Challenges of Distributed Software-Defined Wireless Sensor Networks

Software-defined networking (SDN) is widely perceived to simplify network management and monitoring. The introduction of the SDN model into wireless sensor networks (WSNs)—SDWSNs—helps the SDN controller perform intensive tasks. In contrast, sensor nodes will only perform forwarding tasks to address a WSN’s many problems and challenges, such as energy consumption, reliability, and consistency. This study conducts a review following a systematic process to identify the development concerning the architectural design of SDWSNs with a particular emphasis on the distributed control and programmability features of sensor nodes. A total of 84 papers from reputable databases were evaluated through thematic analysis. The findings revealed the relationship between an SDN and a WSN from conceptual perspectives, the taxonomy of research studies conducted for SDWSNs, and the various architectural development of SDWSNs proposed in the literature from programmable sensor nodes’ perspectives, software sensor nodes, and distributed control. Moreover, the open issues and challenges faced by SDWSNs’ solutions still include the inherent problems of optimal energy consumption, security, and distributed implementations for various applications.