Open Access

Ahmed Nader Al-Dulaimy, Hannes Frey

• Recent progress in intelligent, adaptive, and security-aware Software-Defined Wireless Sensor Networks (SDWSNs) is driven by the integration of Machine Learning (ML) with Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). This systematic survey analyzes 46 peer-reviewed articles published between 2024 and 2025, providing a problem-oriented synthesis of ML-SDWSN research. Emphasizing security, routing, and performance optimization, with a particular focus on deployment architectures, the survey identifies three major trends: increased adoption of ensemble and Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods for security and adaptive control; broader implementation of edge-based ML to minimize inference latency; and greater emphasis on privacy-preserving techniques, especially Federated Learning (FL). The survey presents a structuredRecent progress in intelligent, adaptive, and security-aware Software-Defined Wireless Sensor Networks (SDWSNs) is driven by the integration of Machine Learning (ML) with Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). This systematic survey analyzes 46 peer-reviewed articles published between 2024 and 2025, providing a problem-oriented synthesis of ML-SDWSN research. Emphasizing security, routing, and performance optimization, with a particular focus on deployment architectures, the survey identifies three major trends: increased adoption of ensemble and Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods for security and adaptive control; broader implementation of edge-based ML to minimize inference latency; and greater emphasis on privacy-preserving techniques, especially Federated Learning (FL). The survey presents a structured taxonomy encompassing seven thematic areas: Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) mitigation, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs), routing optimization, Quality of Service (QoS) management, privacy preservation, data integrity, and network-efficiency optimization. Findings are synthesized from over 120 experimental configurations reported in the literature. Due to substantial differences among the reviewed studies in terms of datasets, network topologies, hardware platforms, measurement definitions, and validation methodologies, the reported values are presented as descriptive cross-study aggregates rather than direct comparative benchmarks or formal effect-size estimates. Within these constraints, the survey identifies recurring trade-offs among accuracy, latency, scalability, and privacy. It provides evidence-based design considerations for researchers and practitioners. The survey also highlights eight critical research gaps, including limited multi-dataset validation, a lack of real-world deployments, insufficient scalability analysis, and the need for rigorous evaluation of RL-based SDWSN control.…