Cross-over-net: An energy-aware coordination algorithm for WANETs based on software-defined networking

Software-defined networking (SDN) is an emerging architecture that decouples the network control and data planes. This data plane abstraction provides a workaround to dynamically define and change the network topology and routing. Consequently, these features could drive a greater energy efficiency through the deployment of coordination algorithms that would use concepts of clustering and low-power modes. This paper proposes an optimized coordination algorithm to minimize energy consumption in static Wireless Ad Hoc Networks (WANET) using the software-defined networking model and topology control (TC) mechanisms. Currently the topology control is linked to the type of WANET, however, within the SDN paradigm, the new control plane abstraction makes the topology control agnostic to the underlying network. Thus our SDN controller determines which nodes are the most useful for communication and which nodes should be coordinators at a particular period of time; hence less local processing and contention messages are required. Finally, to prove the potential energy savings of the proposed solution, we have carried out simulations to compare our solution with Span on a WANET scenario. The results show that we can save up to 27% in low node density scenarios.