On the Integration of Information Centric Networking and Fog Computing for Smart Home Services

Abstract

Research on monitoring and control services for smart home and building management is expanding, stimulated by the growing interest in Cloud computing and Internet of Things. In addition to proprietary platforms, a common trend is to connect the smart home network to the Internet and leverage Cloud resources to run the application logic and store historical information. Recently, in many designs, intelligence is introduced at the edge of the home network to support low complexity operations. Interoperability between the different network domains is offered by the TCP/IP protocol suite and its extension for low-power nodes, i.e., 6LoWPAN. In parallel, the revolutionary Information Centric Networking (ICN) paradigm has been recently proposed to support future Internet communications and also data delivery in smart urban ecosystems, including smart home/building services. By leveraging name-based communication, in-network caching and per-packet security, ICN can largely simplify data delivery and service provisioning in instrumented environments. Moreover, by integrating ICN with Cloud technologies, a comprehensive home management system can be built. In this chapter, solutions are presented that rely on ICN for monitoring and controlling the smart environment. The integration of ICN with Cloud/Fog resources is also discussed and a reference architecture is presented as proof-of-concept, together with a preliminary testbed.