Controller Deployments Based on QoS Guarantees in SDN-Enabled Tactical Ad Hoc Networks

Tactical ad hoc networks perform their missions in a promising device-to-device communication way that transmits data and manages resources without centralized infrastructure. Software-Defined Network (SDN) makes a paradigm evolution from the existing networks as it decouples between network control and data forwarding, and brings unprecedented programmability for network management. However, an SDN-enabled approach in tactical ad hoc networks gives rise to new challenges since the original architecture is not designed to apply in mobile ad hoc network. In this paper, we propose a novel SDN-enabled architecture designed for tactical ad hoc networks. Then both the problem of controller deployments and the assignment of data plane are modeled based on delay and energy consumption. We solve the model above using Mixed Integer Programming, Experimental results show that our method performs well in both the data plane delay guarantees and the energy consumption optimization.