# ICENET: An Information Centric Protocol for Big Data Wireless Sensor Networks
## 1 Introduction
In [23], the authors presented an scheme to apply the ICN paradigm in industrial environments, in order to reduce the bandwidth overhead caused by periodic traffic. There are a number of developing projects around the world that investigate different ICN approaches [13; 24]. A particular case, Content-Centric Networking (CCN), proposed in [25], has gained the attention of researchers for its applicability in WSNs [13; 16; 21; 26; 27; 28]. However, CCN was conceived for the internet, and requires appropriate modifications to be applied to WSNs. In this paper, we propose ICENET--Information Centric protocol for sensor NETworks. ICENET is a soft-state information-centric protocol for big data gathering in large-scale WSNs, inspired by the CCN approach. The proposed protocol enables content-based routing over a tree-based topology. Data routing based on content allows clients to interact semantically with the network to request data. In this context, a user can request data from the network using SQL-based queries which are processed in-network by the protocol. A single message collects data from multiple nodes during a certain period of time. The tree-based structure is constructed by the Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) [29], introduced by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as the standard routing protocol for LLNs. Due to its hierarchical structure, tree-based routing is a potential candidate for optimizing bandwidth usage. As the routing structure is hierarchical, parent nodes send messages only to children and vice versa, allowing the number of messages to be reduced. Many studies have used tree-based routing to improve bandwidth usage and save energy in large-scale multihop WSNs [30; 31; 32]. In a ICN context, parent nodes can forward queries based on the content provided by their child nodes. This strategy also significantly reduces the number of message transmissions. A soft-state mechanism makes the protocol robust and prepared for packet losses and changes in the network topology: Messages used to request data and to keep network states alive are periodically refreshed, according to timers that adapt to network stability. The goal is to send few messages when the network is stable, in order to save energy, and send messages aggressively during periods of instability, enabling a quick reaction to topological changes. Simulation results show that ICENET is suitable for big data gathering in large-scale WSNs. The proposed protocol is scalable, energy-efficient, suitable for collecting large volumes of data, and presents a low overhead. Compared to the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) [33], ICENET presents a higher success rate and up to 84% less overhead. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we investigate related works proposed in the literature. In Section 3, the ICN paradigm and CCN approach are explained and the fundamentals of RPL are presented. ICENET is presented in Section 4. Simulations results are given in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper and outlines future research directions.