Rethinking Wireless Network Management Through Sensor-driven Contextual Analysis

Wireless network management is important to ensure the performance, utilization, allocation, and robustness of the network is optimized. Until now, wireless network management has typically been dictated by in-band information, such as wireless measurements, client locations, or even device state. This position paper explores fundamental new ways to manage the network by utilizing out-of-band data provided by a rich deployment of sensors. Out-of-band data can capture information about the users, objects, or environments associated with a network device, meaning that richer contextual policies can be implemented in the network. We propose an architecture called SenseNet, which builds upon three recent trends: (1) the massive deployment of sensors today, (2) the existence of deep-learning algorithms to glean meaningful insights from the sensory data, and (3) the provisioning of edge computing resources to provide real-time actuation of new sensor-based policies. A brief evaluation shows the feasibility and motivates SenseNet and afterwards challenges towards practical deployment are discussed.