Procedia Computer Science Procedia Computer Science 00 (2009) 000–000 www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia The 2012 Iberoamerican Conference on Electronics Engineering and Computer Science (CIIECC 2012) Exploitation of OpenFlow in Wireless Sensor Networks Arif Mahmud* , Rahim Rahmani Department of Information Technology and Media, Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall 85170, Sweden Abstract A novel idea presented in this paper is to exploit the OpenFlow technology to address reliability, which is one of the most important factors in sensor networks. The proposed approach unified with flow-sensor and communication with controller. Hardware to programmable hardware, operating system to network operating system, vendor to owner specific, previous hardware defined networking (device monitoring, traffic controlling, and topology definition) turns to be software defined and where everything leads to a programmable and customized networking system. OpenFlow bears the characteristics to control the flow-sensor and monitor sensor traffic flow that also addresses another two important problems robust routing and load balancing. Flow-sensor displayed much better performances in comparison to typical sensors through generating less number of packets with lower simulation time in ideal scenario and even better results are possible for larger networks. Keywords: Reliabilty; robust routing; OpenFlow; Flow-sensor 1. Introduction The OpenFlow can split the traffic path into data packet (maintained by underlying router or switch) and control packet (maintained by a controller or control server) which turn the physical device into a simple one from a complicated mode since complex intelligence programs are removed. So, it becomes easier for the researchers to investigate on experimental traffic, protocol and overall network as well and it is very much expected that in near future these research will lead to a significant achievement in network modernization [1]. OpenFlow control packet rate was compared with the same scenario of OLSR where OpenFlow was found to be little bit higher due to higher header definition rate. It is also true that some additional control packet is added in OpenFlow. But from attainable throughput and feasible result viewpoint, the amount of traffic and header definition rate is reasonably low and almost negligible [2]. OpenFlow is one of hot topics now a day and no one has ever tried this protocol on wireless sensor networks as far as our concern. OpenFlow based sensor, named ´flow-sensor´ is claimed to be much more reliable in comparison * Arif Mahmud. Tel.: +46-736356893; fax: +0-000-000-0000 . E-mail address: arif.mahmud@miun.se.