Abstract-Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are the key components of the emerging Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm. They are now ubiquitous and used in a plurality of application domains. WSNs are still domain specific and usually deployed to support a specific application. However, as WSNs' nodes are becoming more and more powerful, it is getting more and more pertinent to research how multiple applications could share a very same WSN infrastructure. Virtualization is a technology that can potentially enable this sharing. This paper is a survey on WSN virtualization. It provides a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art and an in-depth discussion of the research issues. We introduce the basics of WSN virtualization and motivate its pertinence with carefully selected scenarios. Existing works are presented in detail and critically evaluated using a set of requirements derived from the scenarios. The pertinent research projects are also reviewed. Several research issues are also discussed with hints on how they could be tackled. perform computations and communicate [2]. The most obvious drawback of the current WSNs is that they are domain-specific and task-oriented, tailored for particular applications with little or no possibility of reusing them for newer applications. This strategy is inefficient and leads to redundant deployments when new applications are contemplated. With the introduction of the IoT, it is not unrealistic to envision that future WSN deployments will have to support multiple applications simultaneously. Index Terms-Virtualization is a well-established concept that allows the abstraction of actual physical computing resources into logical units, enabling their efficient usage by multiple independent users [3]. It is a promising technique that can allow the efficient utilization of WSN deployments, as multiple applications will be able to co-exist on the same virtualized WSN. Virtualization is a key technique for the realization of the Future Internet [4] and it is indeed quite pertinent to explore it in the context of WSNs.Virtualizing WSNs brings with it many benefits; for example, even applications that were not envisioned a priori may be able to utilize existing WSN deployments. A second, related benefit is the elimination of tight coupling between WSN services/applications and WSN deployments. This allows experienced as well as novice application developers to develop innovative WSN applications without needing to know the technical details of the WSNs involved. Another benefit is that WSN applications and services can utilize as well as be utilized by third-party applications. It can also help to define a business model, with roles such as physical WSN provider, virtual WSN provider and WSN service provider.The WSN virtualization concept can be applied to several interesting application areas. Recent advances in smart phones and autonomous vehicles [5] have made it possible to have multiple on-board sensors on them. Mobile crowd sensing is one area that can take advantage of virtuali...

n the last few years, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have become ubiquitous and are being used in a broad array of application domains, including healthcare, agriculture, surveillance, and security. These WSNs are composed of small-scale nodes that have the ability to sense, compute, and communicate [1]. While early sensor nodes were resource-constrained with limited capabilities, recent advances in sensor hardware technology have made it possible to produce sensor nodes that have more processing power and memory, and prolonged battery life.Virtualization is a key technique for the realization of the future Internet, and it is indeed quite pertinent to explore it in the context of WSNs. Virtualization makes it possible to present physical computing resources by abstracting them into logical units, enabling their efficient usage by multiple independent users, including multiple concurrent applications [2]. Furthermore, it allows for the deployment of applications that were not even envisioned during an infrastructure's initial deployment.To date, realizations of WSNs have been domain-specific and task-oriented. Applications are bundled with a WSN at the time of deployment, and it is next to impossible to use the same WSN for another application. This leads to redundant deployments and underutilization of these resources. There are two approaches to allow multiple applications to access deployed WSN resources. One is to allow multiple applications to share the data gathered from a WSN. In this approach, a sink/gateway node collects all the data from the WSN and shares it among multiple users. For example, in [3], WSNs are merged into the cloud by sending observed sensor data through a host manager that lies outside the WSN. The host manager simply collects the sensor data, profiles/aggregates it, and then allows multiple applications to use it for their own purposes.The second approach is to use the capabilities of the individual sensor nodes to execute multiple application tasks concurrently, and allow applications to group these sensor nodes together according to their requirements. The key difference between the two approaches is that the former approach allows the sharing of WSN data among multiple applications, while the latter allows sharing of WSN nodes by multiple applications. This article is focused on the second approach because it makes it possible to provision more innovative applications over the deployed WSNs, even applications that were not envisioned a priori. This will greatly improve the efficiency of deployed WSNs and will also encourage new business models.This article introduces the WSN virtualization concept, critically reviews the state of the art in WSN virtualization, and proposes a new early architecture that focuses on fixed WSNs. We illustrate the potential of the architecture by instantiating it for a fire monitoring scenario [4] in which multiple applications share the same WSN. We have built a prototype to demonstrate its feasibility and to measure its performance. We also identify ...

Next Generation Networks (NGNs), as envisioned by ITU-T, are packet-based networks, capable of provisioning consistent and ubiquitous services to end-users, independently of the network, the access technology and the devices used. RESTful Web services are now being contemplated as a technology for service provisioning in NGNs. They are emerging as an alternative, which may be more adequate than SOAPbased Web services in some cases. SOAP-based Web services are modular applications that can be discovered and invoked over a network. RESTful Web services, on the other hand, are defined as a network architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems. This paper presents a survey on RESTful Web services for service provisioning in NGNs. It introduces the concept of RESTful Web services and reviews the state-of-the-art of RESTful-based-service provisioning in NGNs. It also provides an evaluation of the overall suitability of RESTful Web services for service provisioning in NGNs, and discusses research directions. RESTful Web services do show significant potential for service provisioning in NGNs. However, open issues such as publication/discovery and mechanisms for the development of complex session-based services need to be solved before its full potential can be realized.

The Internet has made several giant leaps over the years, from a fixed to a mobile Internet, then to the Internet of Things, and now to a Tactile Internet. The Tactile Internet goes far beyond data, audio and video delivery over fixed and mobile networks, and even beyond allowing communication and collaboration among things. It is expected to enable haptic communications and allow skill set delivery over networks. Some examples of potential applications are telesurgery, vehicle fleets, augmented reality and industrial process automation. Several papers already cover many of the Tactile Internet-related concepts and technologies, such as haptic codecs, applications, and supporting technologies. However, none of them offers a comprehensive survey of the Tactile Internet, including its architectures and algorithms. Furthermore, none of them provides a systematic and critical review of the existing solutions. To address these lacunae, we provide a comprehensive survey of the architectures and algorithms proposed to date for the Tactile Internet. In addition, we critically review them using a well-defined set of requirements and discuss some of the lessons learned as well as the most promising research directions.

Abstract-Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have become pervasive and are used for a plethora of applications and services. They are usually deployed with specific applications and services; thereby precluding their re-use when other applications and services are contemplated. This can inevitably lead to the proliferation of redundant WSN deployments. Virtualization is a technology that can aid in tackling this issue. It enables the sharing of resources/infrastructures by multiple independent entities. This position paper proposes a novel multi-layer architecture for WSN virtualization and identifies the research challenges. Related work is also discussed. We illustrate the potential of the architecture by applying it to a scenario in which WSNs are shared for fire monitoring.

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Multimedia conferencing applications play a critical role in business and everyday life. However, scalability and elasticity remain quite elusive, even though they are the keys to efficiency in resource usage. A cloud-based approach could solve the scalability and elasticity issues and bring other benefits such as an easy introduction of new applications. This paper proposes a cloud infrastructure that relies on fine-grained conferencing substrates. These substrates are virtualized and shared by conferencing applications. They enable scalability and elasticity.