Review and Analysis of Recent Advances in Intelligent Network Softwarization for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technology that aims to connect heterogeneous and constrained objects to each other and to the Internet. It has grown significantly in a wide variety of applications such as smart homes, smart cities, smart vehicles, etc. The huge number of connected devices increases the challenges, as IoT provides diverse and complex network services with different requirements on a common infrastructure. Network Softwarization is the latest network paradigm that transforms traditional network processes to the separation of hardware and software by using some enabling network technologies such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). Machine Learning (ML) plays an essential role in creating smarter IoT networks, as it has shown remarkable results in various domains. Given that the network softwarization allows it to be easily integrated, ML can play a crucial role in efficient and self-adaptive IoT networks. In this paper, we provide a detailed overview of the concepts of IoT, network softwarization, and ML, and we study and discuss the state of the art of intelligent ML-enabled network softwarization for IoT. We also identify the most prominent future research directions to be considered.