Towards Software-Defined Tactical Networks: Experiments and Challenges for Control Overhead

Software-defined Tactical Networks (SDTNs) have the potential to host intelligent mechanisms to manage ever-changing communication scenarios in networks with heterogeneous radio links. However, standard SDN protocols, like Open-Flow, were designed for non-mobile, reliable, high throughput, and low latency networks. This fact motivated the present investigation, reporting experimental results to quantify OpenFlow's control overhead in two different network scenarios i) stable conditions with wired links and static nodes, and ii) a topology with mobile nodes in a vignette from the Anglova scenario. Our results suggest that standard OpenFlow has a poor performance over stable conditions and VHF radio links (i.e. high control overhead) and similar results were observed in a topology with nodes moving through challenging terrain. These experimental results support a discussion and an initial solution on open challenges towards SDTNs and how OpenFlow can adapt to different communication technologies, such as SatCom, UHF, and VHF by reducing the control overhead.