{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,14]],"date-time":"2025-11-14T16:54:46Z","timestamp":1763139286287,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":53,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"11","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,6,6]],"date-time":"2020-06-06T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1591401600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Due to reliability and performance considerations, employing multiple software-defined networking (SDN) controllers is known as a promising technique in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Nevertheless, employing multiple controllers increases the inter-controller synchronization overhead. Therefore, optimal placement of SDN controllers to optimize the performance of a WSN, subject to the maximum number of controllers, determined based on the synchronization overhead, is a challenging research problem. In this paper, we first formulate this research problem as an optimization problem, then to address the optimization problem, we propose the Cuckoo Placement of Controllers (Cuckoo-PC) algorithm. Cuckoo-PC works based on the Cuckoo optimization algorithm which is a meta-heuristic algorithm inspired by nature. This algorithm seeks to find the global optimum by imitating brood parasitism of some cuckoo species. To evaluate the performance of Cuckoo-PC, we compare it against a couple of state-of-the-art methods, namely Simulated Annealing (SA) and Quantum Annealing (QA). The experiments demonstrate that Cuckoo-PC outperforms both SA and QA in terms of the network performance by lowering the average distance between sensors and controllers up to 13% and 9%, respectively. Comparing our method against Integer Linear Programming (ILP) reveals that Cuckoo-PC achieves approximately similar results (less than 1% deviation) in a noticeably shorter time.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s20113231","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,6,9]],"date-time":"2020-06-09T05:16:14Z","timestamp":1591679774000},"page":"3231","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":20,"title":["Cuckoo-PC: An Evolutionary Synchronization-Aware Placement of SDN Controllers for Optimizing the Network Performance in WSNs"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"given":"Shirin","family":"Tahmasebi","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran 11365-11155, Iran"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2872-0718","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mohadeseh","family":"Safi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Shariaty Technical College, Technical and Vocational University, Tehran 13114-16846, Iran"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Somayeh","family":"Zolfi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer Engineering, University of Science and Technology, Tehran 16851-18918, Iran"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Mohammad Reza","family":"Maghsoudi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Zand Institute of Higher Education, Shiraz 71887-73489, Iran"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1384-5323","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hamid Reza","family":"Faragardi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5590-0784","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hossein","family":"Fotouhi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Innovation, Design, and Engineering, M\u00e4lardalen University, 721 23 V\u00e4ster\u00e5s, Sweden"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,6,6]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","first-page":"30","article-title":"Software-defined networking","volume":"17","author":"McKeown","year":"2009","journal-title":"INFOCOM Keynote Talk"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1617","DOI":"10.1109\/SURV.2014.012214.00180","article-title":"A survey of software-defined networking: Past, present, and future of programmable networks","volume":"16","author":"Nunes","year":"2014","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. 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