Usability of SDN routing within IoT robotics

Abstract

Increase in urbanization has greatly decrease manpower in agricultural sectors. With the growing world population, the demand for agricultural products is increasing. Thus a more coste-effective and modern agriculture needs to be addressed. To achieve a cost-effective modern agriculture, a simple, reliable, and manageable routing between the nodes of IoT Robotics networks for precision farming are needed. The focus of this paper is to enhance routing within IoT Robotics networks for precision farming using Software Designed Net-working (SDN) technologies. Current routing protocols for IoT robotics solve specific issues each. Some of the issues with the nodes are high energy needs and resource constraints. This is as a result of both the controller and data planes of the routing function housed within the same node. SDN routing within IoT Robotics network is proposed in this paper to reduce energy needs and resource constraints of the nodes as well as to provide simple, reliable and more manageable routing within IoT Robotics networks. Environment setup for the demo of SDN routing within IoT Robotics networks was made using Ubuntu local machine, virtualization system, Mininet Virtual Machine (VM), MiniEdit, POX controller, one Ubuntu VM, and Wireshark. In the demo four scenarios were simulated. The first scenario shows the building of flow in directly-connected nodes by SDN controller to enable routing of packets between them. The second scenario shows building ows by SDN controller in different switches to enable routing of packets between none directly-connected nodes. The third scenario shows routing between two nodes in different subnets. The fourth scenario shows routing between nodes with a completely isolated SDN controller. With SDN routing within IoT Robotics networks for precision farming, a global routing algorithm will be achieved as well as more manageable routing. This will result in farmers opting for more IoT devices as a result of lower equipment cost.