Latency-Optimized IoT Communications Through Information-Centric Caching: A Survey

Abstract

This paper aims to survey the integration of Information-Centric Networking (ICN) with the Internet of Things (IoT), considering various aspects, including the role of Named Data Networking (NDN) caching schemes in mitigating latency in IoT use cases. Current IP-based protocols may not adequately meet IoT system requirements, as they are not sufficient for dynamic and latency-sensitive IoT applications, such as health-care. NDN provides a shift from location-based to content-based information retrieval, which improves data availability and network efficiency by bringing cached content closer to users and reducing the bandwidth required for data delivery. This paper also reviews and classifies current caching approaches for NDN-based IoT, including content delivery and placement, and discusses the advantages, drawbacks, and effects of these caching schemes on content retrieval latency. It further provides a comparative evaluation of representative caching strategies to highlight their latency-performance trade-offs. This survey outlines the present issues, suggests future work, and provides useful information for improving latency-aware caching schemes for IoT networks.