Software-Defined Networking for Smart Buildings: Advances and Challenges

Abstract

Last decade has witnessed a proliferation of work, both from the academic and the industrial sectors, to provide methods and technologies to support smart buildings. Due to advances in electronics and telecommunications, sensors and actuators may be deployed and interconnected, at low cost, in buildings to make them smart, energy efficient, and secure. Smart buildings (SBs) will redefine the way habitants live and interact in the future. SBs are among the dominant fields of Internet-of-Things applications. Software-defined networking (SDN) is an emerging solution to make easier network management. This chapter provides a brief state of the art regarding networks used to support SBs and it addresses the benefits of SDN in the design and management of networks for SBs. As SDN-based SB roadmap is still at an early stage, this chapter discusses some challenges to design and deploy SDN-based networks to fulfil SB requirements.