Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are becoming increasingly popular with the advent of the Internet of things (IoT). Various real-world applications of WSNs such as in smart grids, smart farming and smart health would require a potential deployment of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of sensor nodes/actuators. To ensure proper working order and network efficiency of such a network of sensor nodes, an effective WSN management system has to be integrated. However, the inherent challenges of WSNs such as sensor/actuator heterogeneity, application dependency and resource constraints have led to challenges in implementing effective traditional WSN management. This difficulty in management increases as the WSN becomes larger. Software Defined Networking (SDN) provides a promising solution in flexible management WSNs by allowing the separation of the control logic from the sensor nodes/actuators. The advantage with this SDN-based management in WSNs is that it enables centralized control of the entire WSN making it simpler to deploy network-wide management protocols and applications on demand. This paper highlights some of the recent work on traditional WSN management in brief and reviews SDN-based management techniques for WSNs in greater detail while drawing attention to the advantages that SDN brings to traditional WSN management. This paper also investigates open research challenges in coming up with mechanisms for flexible and easier SDN-based WSN configuration and management.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19), declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a global pandemic, has brought with it changes to the general way of life. Major sectors of the world industry and economy have been affected and the Internet of Things (IoT) management and framework is no exception in this regard. This article provides an up to date survey on how a global pandemic such as COVID-19 has affected the world of IoT technologies. It looks at the contributions that IoT and associated sensor technologies have made towards virus tracing, tracking and spread mitigation. The associated challenges of deployment of sensor hardware in the face of a rapidly spreading pandemic have been looked into as part of this review article. The effects of a global pandemic on the evolution of IoT architectures and management have also been addressed, leading to the likely outcomes on future IoT implementations. In general, this article provides an insight into the advancement of sensor-based E-health towards the management of global pandemics. It also answers the question of how a global virus pandemic has shaped the future of IoT networks.

While a robust and reliable communication network for monitoring the mining environment in a timely manner to take care of people, the planet Earth and profits is key, the mining environment is very challenging in terms of achieving reliable wireless transmission. This survey therefore investigates the reliability of LoRaWAN communication in the mining environment, identifying the challenges and design requirements. Bearing in mind that LoRaWAN is an IoT communication technology that has not yet been fully deployed in mining, the survey incorporates an investigation of LoRaWAN and other mining IoT communication technologies to determine their records of reliability, strengths and weaknesses and applications in mining. This aspect of the survey gives insight into the requirements of future mining IoT communication technologies and where LoRaWAN can be deployed in both underground and surface mining. Specific questions that the survey addresses are: (1) What is the record of reliability of LoRaWAN in mining environments? (2) What contributions have been made with regard to LoRa/LoRaWAN communication in general towards improving reliability? (3) What are the challenges and design requirements of LoRaWAN reliability in mining environments? (4) What research opportunities exist for achieving LoRaWAN communication in mining environments? In addition to recommending open research opportunities, the lessons learnt from the survey are also outlined.

Future generation power grids will require the introduction and deployment of distributed energy resources to meet modern-day load requirements. Consequently, we expect to see a rise in microgrids (MGs) existing as part of the main grid (grid-connected) or independent (islanded). Contained in these microgrids are a combination of energy resources such as solar, wind and fossil fuels coupled with storage devices, electric vehicles and smart devices supporting the prosumer operation. However, the addition of renewable energy resources would mean fluctuations in energy supply which would cause power system instability if not managed effectively. Hence, to maximize the management flexibility of MGs, the concept of microgrid software definition is introduced. A concept that can be looked at as giving the microgrid an operating system to improve operation response and event detection by maintaining a global view of the network. This paper therefore critically analyses what this entails by presenting an architecture for Software-Defined Microgrids (SDMGs) and discussing the management opportunities that softwarization of the MG introduces. We also highlight the design requirements and associated challenges in implementing and deploying SDMGs.

Software-defined networking (SDN) promises a wide range of application benefits to the Internet of Things (IoT) including the flexible management of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). While the integration of SDN techniques in WSNs is being extensively investigated, there remains a need for a general SDN-based management system for WSNs. A system that should provide an opportunity for rapid testing and implementation of management modules to the IoT developer community working on taking advantage of the SDN benefits. Therefore, this paper proposes a generic and modular WSN management system based on SDN (SDNMM). SDNMM introduces the concept of management modularity using a management service interface (MSI) that enables management entities to be added as modules. The system leverages the use of SDN in WSNs and by being modular it also allows for rapid development and implementation of IoT applications. The system has been built on an open source platform to support its generic aspect and a sample resource management module implemented and evaluated to support the proposed modular management approach. Results show how adding a resource management module via the MSI improved packet delivery, delay, control traffic, and energy consumption over comparable frameworks.