User-centric context data collection and provision harnessing Content-Centric Networking paradigm

SUMMARY A comprehensive context management approach is necessary in the era of ubiquitous technologies, and efficient context data collection is one of the most fundamental and important processes for realizing comprehensive context management. Traditional context data collection approaches are based on Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or User Datagram Protocol (UDP) over Internet Protocol (IP), which has several disadvantages, such as lack of efficient mobility support, security and data transfer efficiency. Content-Centric Networking (CCN), on the other hand, provides advantages in terms of mobility, security and bandwidth efficiency in comparison with IP. In this paper, we introduce our user-centric comprehensive context management framework, and propose a secure and efficient context data collection and provision approach based on the framework using CCN as a network and transport layer. This context collection approach provides a flexible security mechanism by introducing three levels of security type. It also provides bandwidth efficiency by taking advantage of CCN's content caching; performance evaluation results show that our approach can reduce bandwidth consumption up to 99% for pull and up to 46% for push in comparison to a UDP/IP-based system. Our approach also provides advantages in supporting mobility and leveraging multiple interfaces. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.