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Virtualization enables multiple applications to share the same WSAN. However, in heterogeneous environments, VWSANs raise new challenges, such as the need for on-the-fly, dynamic, elastic, and scalable provisioning of gateways. NFV is a paradigm emerging to help tackle these new challenges. It leverages standard virtualization technology to consolidate special-purpose network elements on commodity hardware. This article presents NFV architecture for VWSAN gateways, in which software instances of gateway modules are hosted in NFV infrastructure operated and managed by a VWSAN gateway provider. We consider several VWSAN providers, each with its own brand or combination of brands of sensors and actuators/ robots. These sensors and actuators can be accessed by a variety of applications, each of which may have different interface and QoS (latency, throughput, etc.) requirements. The NFV infrastructure allows dynamic, elastic, and scalable deployment of gateway modules in this heterogeneous VWSAN environment. Furthermore, the proposed architecture is flexible enough to easily allow integration of new sensors and actuators, and accommodation of new application domains. We present a prototype that is built using the OpenStack platform. Performance results are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WSNs have become pervasive and are used in many applications and services. Usually, deployments of WSNs are task-oriented and domain-specific, thereby precluding reuse when other applications and services are contemplated. This inevitably leads to the proliferation of redundant WSN deployments. Virtualization is a technology that can aid in tackling this issue, as it enables the sharing of resources/infrastructure by multiple independent entities. In this article we critically review the state of the art and propose a novel architecture for WSN virtualization. The proposed architecture has four layers (physical layer, virtual sensor layer, virtual sensor access layer, and overlay layer) and relies on a constrained application protocol. We illustrate its potential by using it in a scenario where a single WSN is shared by multiple applications, one of which is a fire monitoring application. We present the proof-of-concept prototype we have built along with the performance measurements, and discuss future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]