Delay-Tolerant ICN and Its Application to LoRa

TL;DR

This paper introduces a delay-tolerant ICN protocol framework tailored for long-range wireless networks like LoRa, enabling efficient and robust communication despite high RTTs, with practical implementation and evaluation on IoT hardware.

Contribution

It presents the first practical ICN implementation over LoRa with a reliable MAC, demonstrating improved efficiency and longevity for battery-powered IoT nodes.

Findings

Reflexive forwarding naturally handles sporadic data generation.

RICE reduces polling overhead without violating ICN principles.

LoRa-ICN nodes can operate for over a year on battery.

Abstract

Connecting long-range wireless networks to the Internet imposes challenges due to vastly longer round-trip-times (RTTs). In this paper, we present an ICN protocol framework that enables robust and efficient delay-tolerant communication to edge networks. Our approach provides ICN-idiomatic communication between networks with vastly different RTTs. We applied this framework to LoRa, enabling end-to-end consumer-to-LoRa-producer interaction over an ICN-Internet and asynchronous data production in the LoRa edge. Instead of using LoRaWAN, we implemented an IEEE 802.15.4e DSME MAC layer on top of the LoRa PHY and ICN protocol mechanisms in RIOT OS. Executed on off-the-shelf IoT hardware, we provide a comparative evaluation for basic NDN-style ICN [60], RICE [31]-like pulling, and reflexive forwarding [46]. This is the first practical evaluation of ICN over LoRa using a reliable MAC. Our results show that periodic polling in NDN works inefficiently when facing long and differing RTTs. RICE reduces polling overhead and exploits gateway knowledge, without violating ICN principles. Reflexive forwarding reflects sporadic data generation naturally. Combined with a local data push, it operates efficiently and enables lifetimes of >1 year for battery powered LoRa-ICN nodes.