  Virtualization enables the sharing of a same wireless sensor network (WSN) by
multiple applications. However, in heterogeneous environments, virtualized
wireless sensor networks (VWSN) raises new challenges such as the need for
on-the-fly, dynamic, elastic and scalable provisioning of gateways. Network
Functions Virtualization (NFV) is an emerging paradigm that can certainly aid
in tackling these new challenges. It leverages standard virtualization
technology to consolidate special-purpose network elements on top of commodity
hardware. This article presents a case study on NFV based gateways for VWSNs.
In the study, a VWSN gateway provider, operates and manages an NFV based
infrastructure. We use two different brands of wireless sensors. The NFV
infrastructure makes possible the dynamic, elastic and scalable deployment of
gateway modules in this heterogeneous VWSN environment. The prototype built
with Openstack as platform is described.
