SatCache: a profile‐aware caching strategy for information‐centric satellite networks

Abstract

ABSTRACTInformation‐centric networking (ICN) is a new networking paradigm, which is attracting increasing attention from the scientific community. ICN focuses on content handling and distribution rather than host‐to‐host communications. Satellite systems have always played a key role in content distribution, and therefore, they are expected to be fundamental components of the ICN. However, it is not obvious whether solutions that are being developed for terrestrial ICNs are effective in satellite scenarios as well. More specifically, the focus of this paper is on in‐network content caching, which is an important feature characterising all ICN proposals but, as we will show, should be redesigned to address the specific characteristics of satellite networks. Indeed, in this paper, a novel caching scheme named SatCache is proposed, which exploits the broadcast nature of the satellite communication medium and creates a profile of the preferences of network users in order to estimate their potential interest in a given content. The proposed approach is based on a simple model of the user behaviour. By aggregating the content requests generated by a large number of users, a collective behaviour can be observed, which fits the output of large measurement campaigns discussed in the literature. Simulation results given in the paper show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.