The Internet of Things (IoT) is shaping the next generation of cyber-physical systems to improve the future industry for smart cities. It has created novel and essential applications that require specific network performance to enhance the quality of services. Since network performance requirements are application-oriented, it is of paramount importance to provide tailored solutions that seamlessly manage the network resources and orchestrate the network to satisfy user requirements. In this article, we propose ELISE, a Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework to optimize the slotframe size of the Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) protocol in IIoT networks while considering the user requirements. We primarily address the problem of designing a framework that self-adapts to the optimal slotframe length that best suits the user’s requirements. The framework takes care of all functionalities involved in the correct functioning of the network, while the RL agent instructs the framework with a set of actions to determine the optimal slotframe size each time the user requirements change. We evaluate the performance of ELISE through extensive analysis based on simulations and experimental evaluations on a testbed to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach in adapting network resources at runtime to satisfy user requirements.

This paper is aimed to present a comprehensive survey of relevant research over the period 2012-2021 of Software-Defined Wireless Sensor Network (SDWSN) proposals and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to perform network management, policy enforcement, and network configuration functions. This survey provides helpful information and insights to the scientific and industrial communities, and professional organisations interested in SDWSNs, mainly the current state-of-art, machine learning techniques, and open issues.