Hybrid Wireless Network with SDN and Legacy Devices in ad-hoc Environments

On temporary events, like concerts or emergency scenarios, where a communication infrastructure may not be sufficient or even present, networks can be built in a spontaneous way with the available network elements and radio access technologies, to support proper communication and data access. However, these ad-hoc networks, without a centralized view, can be inefficient when compared to a detached centralized control approach like in Software Defined Networks (SDNs). Moreover, SDNs can bring several advantages to these environments, such as adaptability and performance increase, despite not supporting wireless interfaces. However, in these scenarios, not all nodes are able to support SDN. This paper proposes a Spontaneous Heterogeneous Wireless Software Defined Network with a hybrid approach that is able to opportunistically use all available elements that may compose the network, regardless of whether they are legacy or SDN nodes. The proposed approach is tested in several scenarios with a different ratio of legacy to SDN nodes. We conclude that the network is able to work with hybrid nodes, and that when more Hybrid SDN (H-SDN) devices are used to forward packets, the network performance increases or is maintained when compared to a pure ad-hoc solution.