SatCache: a profile-aware caching strategy for information-centric satellite networks

Information-centric networking (ICN) is a new networking paradigm, which is attracting increasing attention from thescientific community. ICN focuses on content handling and distribution rather than host-to-host communications. Satellitesystems have always played a key role in content distribution, and therefore, they are expected to be fundamentalcomponents of the ICN. However, it is not obvious whether solutions that are being developed for terrestrial ICNs areeffective in satellite scenarios as well. More specifically, the focus of this paper is on in-network content caching, whichis an important feature characterising all ICN proposals but, as we will show, should be redesigned to address the specificcharacteristics of satellite networks. Indeed, in this paper, a novel caching scheme named SatCache is proposed, whichexploits the broadcast nature of the satellite communication medium and creates a profile of the preferences of networkusers in order to estimate their potential interest in a given content. The proposed approach is based on a simple model ofthe user behaviour. By aggregating the content requests generated by a large number of users, a collective behaviour canbe observed, which fits the output of large measurement campaigns discussed in the literature. Simulation results given inthe paper show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.