Transparent CoAP Services to IoT Endpoints through ICN Operator Networks

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Networking
• Internet of Things (IoT)

Background:

• The Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) is designed for resource-constrained devices in the Internet of Things (IoT).
• Implementing full CoAP services on IoT devices can demand significant computing power, energy, and storage.
• Existing CoAP extensions offer advanced functionalities but exacerbate endpoint resource limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and implement a CoAP handler that leverages Information-Centric Networking (ICN).
• To demonstrate how an ICN core network can transparently provide CoAP services.
• To reduce the computational, communication, and state management overhead on constrained IoT devices.

Main Methods:

• Development of a CoAP handler integrated with an ICN core network.
• Transparently serving CoAP requests and responses through the ICN infrastructure.
• Experimental evaluation of the CoAP handler's performance and impact on endpoint resource usage.

Main Results:

• The CoAP handler successfully provides CoAP services via the ICN core network.
• CoAP traffic routed over ICN shifts overhead and complexity away from constrained endpoints.
• Experimental results confirm reduced computation complexity, communication overhead, and state management for CoAP servers.

Conclusions:

• The proposed CoAP handler effectively offloads processing to the ICN network, addressing endpoint constraints.
• This architecture enables the full potential of CoAP applications in IoT environments.
• The solution significantly enhances the feasibility of deploying sophisticated CoAP services on limited-resource IoT devices.