Edge Caching in IoT Smart Environments: Benefits, Challenges, and Research Perspectives Toward 6G

In the next few years, smart environments are expected to originate billions of raw Internet of Things (IoT) data that need to be stored and processed in order to implement a variety of control and monitoring services. While complex and long-term processing typically relies on remote cloud facilities, low-latency and interactive cognitive services may highly benefit from caching and computation resources, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) components, deployed at the network edge, close to where data are produced. Therefore, edge caching will play a pivotal role for the efficient and effective deployment of smart and cognitive environments, including houses and buildings. In this chapter, we scan the literature related to edge caching for IoT smart environments and identify the most promising decision policies together with the key benefits and open challenges. Conventional caching techniques are first scanned, before delving into more disruptive in-network caching solutions built upon the named data networking (NDN) paradigm. Focus will be then on the possible interplay of NDN-based edge caching policies with software-defined networking (SDN), as well as on the opportunities to leverage edge caching powered by AI techniques as a prominent sixth-generation (6G) enabler.