SDN-based gateway architecture for electromagnetic nano-networks

Abstract

Electromagnetic nano-communication has increasing attention in recent years. Several developments have been achieved in the fabrication, communication and management of various nano-network devices serving potential applications ranging from software-defined metamaterials, wireless robotic materials and body-centric communication. Such applications need uplink and downlink communication between the deployed nano-network and the external macro-world or the Internet through nano-interfaces. As a result, heterogeneous nano-network devices and their interoperability in different Internet of nano-things applications become new challenges for nano-network communication. In this regard, dynamic, flexible and distributed micro/nano-gateways can accommodate such sustainable issues and make the nano-network fully operational, regardless of the adopted application domain or the protocols used in communication. Network functions virtualization and software-defined networking technologies altogether can overcome these challenges. This article proposes SDN-based architecture and software module for the micro/nano-gateway. The proposed software module converts data formats and protocols between nano-network and traditional network domains allowing the nano-devices to be linked to the Internet. A prototype of the module is built, and the performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated based on two communication scenarios; single tenant and multitenant. The result shows the effect of the total number of connected nano-devices and the number of packets sent by each device on the total average round-trip processing delay and the overall throughput of the micro/nano-gateway.