Enhancing Edge-Linked Caching in Information-Centric Networking for Internet of Things With Deep Reinforcement Learning

This paper proposes an Enhanced Edge-Linked Caching (EELC) scheme for Internet of Things (IoT) environments under Information-Centric Networking (ICN), employing an advanced use of Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), a form of deep reinforcement learning, to inform the caching decisions of edge nodes. The rapid proliferation of IoT devices has led to significant challenges in managing content efficiently within networks, particularly in terms of scalability, latency, and energy consumption. Traditional IP-based architectures are inadequate in addressing these challenges, necessitating a shift towards a content-centric approach provided by ICN. By leveraging PPO, EELC dynamically adapts to changing IoT network conditions, optimizing caching strategies to enhance energy efficiency and improve network responsiveness. In our simulation, we verify the performance of EELC in comparison to the Edge-Linked Caching (ELC) and Leave Copy Everywhere (LCE) approaches under different cache sizes and Zipf-distributed content requests. EELC performs far better than ELC under energy efficiency, cache hit ratios, and server hit reduction in all tested scenarios. This indicates that EELC could be a potential approach for significantly improving network efficiency and responsiveness in IoT networks.