On temporary events, like concerts or emergency
scenarios, where a communication infrastructure may not be
sufficient or even present, networks can be built in a spontaneous
way with the available network elements and radio access
technologies, to support proper communication and data access.
However, these ad-hoc networks, without a centralized view, can
be inefficient when compared to a detached centralized control
approach like in Software Defined Networks (SDNs). Moreover,
SDNs can bring several advantages to these environments, such
as adaptability and performance increase, despite not supporting
wireless interfaces. However, in these scenarios, not all nodes are
able to support SDN.
This paper proposes a Spontaneous Heterogeneous Wireless
Software Defined Network with a hybrid approach that is able to
opportunistically use all available elements that may compose the
network, regardless of whether they are legacy or SDN nodes. The
proposed approach is tested in several scenarios with a different
ratio of legacy to SDN nodes. We conclude that the network is
able to work with hybrid nodes, and that when more Hybrid
SDN (H-SDN) devices are used to forward packets, the network
performance increases or is maintained when compared to a pure
ad-hoc solution.