Network Functions Virtualization Architecture for Gateways for Virtualized Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks

Virtualization enables multiple applications to share the same WSAN. However, in heterogeneous environments, VWSANs raise new challenges, such as the need for on-the-fly, dynamic, elastic, and scalable provisioning of gateways. NFV is a paradigm emerging to help tackle these new challenges. It leverages standard virtualization technology to consolidate special-purpose network elements on commodity hardware. This article presents NFV architecture for VWSAN gateways, in which software instances of gateway modules are hosted in NFV infrastructure operated and managed by a VWSAN gateway provider. We consider several VWSAN providers, each with its own brand or combination of brands of sensors and actuators/ robots. These sensors and actuators can be accessed by a variety of applications, each of which may have different interface and QoS (latency, throughput, etc.) requirements. The NFV infrastructure allows dynamic, elastic, and scalable deployment of gateway modules in this heterogeneous VWSAN environment. Furthermore, the proposed architecture is flexible enough to easily allow integration of new sensors and actuators, and accommodation of new application domains. We present a prototype that is built using the OpenStack platform. Performance results are also discussed.