Software-Defined Virtual Sensors for Provisioning IoT Services on Demand

Internet of Things (IoT) has been increasingly developed to provide essential IoT services ranging from personal health, smart homes to smart cities, and critical infrastructures. Sensor/IoT devices are indispensable elements in these systems/services. However, they are too rigid to permit reconfiguration for changes after their implementation. This makes it difficult to provision IoT services on demand and causes inefficient utilization of resources. Software-defined networking (SDN) and Network function virtualization (NFV) are emerging solutions to the programmability of network functions. Provisioning IoT services on demand is a natural utilization of programmability. Inspired by the benefits of SDN-NFV programmability, this paper proposes a softwaredefined virtual sensor (SDVS) that enables the programmability of IoT devices in accordance with IoT applications on demand. The paper presents the design and implementation of the proposed SDVS and demonstrates its use in an on-demand IoT services scenario.