Software-Defined Wireless Sensors and IoT Solutions

Nowadays, there is an evolving trend that pushes the software definition of features that were once fixed at the design time, like functionality, network protocols, frame formats and in-network processing. Terms like virtualization have jumped from the host environment to the network and are now reaching other elements of the IT infrastructure.

Sensors are progressively increasing their computing capacity, and as a result, some parts of their functionality, which were, in the past, casted in silicon, are starting to be software-defined, becoming configurable and adaptable to support new architectures, communication paradigms and services. Technologies like network and service slicing, agile reconfiguration of services and end-to-end reconfiguration and management services are beginning to reach wireless sensors and IoT applications and infrastructures.

The massive deployment of sensors that will be made possible with 5G’s MMTC will undoubtedly require this approach.

As a consequence, we have decided to gather initiatives and research that are making this evolutionary approach possible for the journal Sensors.

This Special Issue targets experiments and proposals that deal with technologies like:

• Sensor virtualization
• Wireless sensor network slicing
• Flexible in-network processing for IoT
• Virtualization of IoT
• Real time reconfiguration of constrained nodes
• Authentication and authorization solutions to support trusted reconfigurations
• Reconfigurable protocols
• Experiments
• Integration of software-defined sensors and IoT solutions with 5G