Hermes: Enabling Energy-efficient IoT Networks with Generalized Deduplication

TL;DR

Hermes is a protocol that leverages generalized deduplication to significantly cut down data transmission and energy consumption in IoT networks, demonstrated on low-cost devices.

Contribution

This work introduces Hermes, an application-level protocol enabling energy-efficient IoT data transmission using generalized deduplication techniques.

Findings

Reduces data transmission traffic in IoT networks

Decreases energy footprint on IoT devices

Operates effectively on consumer-grade hardware

Abstract

With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), the ever growing number of connected devices observed in recent years and foreseen for the next decade suggests that more and more data will have to be transmitted over a network, before being processed and stored in data centers. Generalized deduplication (GD) is a novel technique to effectively reduce the data storage cost by identifying similar data chunks, and able to gradually reduce the pressure from the network infrastructure by limiting the data that needs to be transmitted. This paper presents Hermes, an application-level protocol for the data-plane that can operate over generalized deduplication, as well as over classic deduplication. Hermes significantly reduces the data transmission traffic while effectively decreasing the energy footprint, a relevant matter to consider in the context of IoT deployments. We fully implemented Hermes and evaluated its performance using consumer-grade IoT devices (e.g., Raspberry Pi 4B models). Our results highlight several trade-offs that must be taken into account when considering real-world workloads.