Enhancing Security and Traffic Management in SDN-Enabled Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) play a critical role in Internet of Things (IoT) applications such as environmental monitoring, healthcare, and industrial automation. However, WSNs face severe challenges, including limited energy resources, unreliable communication links, and growing exposure to security threats. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) provides centralized programmability and global visibility, enabling dynamic traffic management and security enforcement. In this work, we propose an SDN-based WSN solution that integrates traffic analysis for anomaly detection and security policy enforcement for attack mitigation. The SDN controller collects flow statistics from sensor nodes, analyzes traffic patterns, and enforces security policies through dynamic flow rule installation. We implemented the proposed architecture in OMNeT++, and preliminary results show that the framework can detect abnormal flows and mitigate them by blocking malicious nodes.