Energy aware NDN routing mechanism for IoT

The rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) has intensified the need for efficient, scalable, and sustainable communication architectures. Named Data Networking (NDN), a content-centric networking paradigm, presents a promising alternative to traditional IPbased systems by focusing on data names rather than host addresses. However, standard NDN forwarding strategies such as BestRoute and Multicast fail to account for the energy constraints inherent in IoT environments, leading to inefficient resource utilization and shortened network lifetimes. This thesis proposes a novel forwarding strategy Energy-Aware Best Route (EABR) to address the energy limitations of NDN in static IoT topologies. EABR extends the standard BestRoute mechanism by incorporating real-time energy-awareness into the forwarding decision process. Nodes periodically exchange their residual energy information using lightweight signaling, enabling each node to dynamically adjust its Forwarding Information Base (FIB) and prioritize routes through higher-energy neighbors. This approach ensures a more balanced distribution of traffic, reduces early energy depletion of critical nodes, and extends the overall network lifespan. The strategy was implemented and tested in ndnSIM, a simulation environment built on the NS-3 framework. Extensive experiments were conducted across four representative topologies Ring, Grid, Tree, and Complex Tree to evaluate performance in terms of Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Average Delay, Energy Consumption, and Energy Balance. The results show that EABR consistently outperforms BestRoute and Multicast in all metrics. Specifically, EABR achieved higher delivery rates, lower latency, reduced energy consumption, and significantly improved energy distribution across the network. By leveraging energy-awareness, EABR aligns NDN's strengths with the practical constraints of IoT networks. The outcomes of this study demonstrate that sustainable, intelligent forwarding in NDN is achievable with minimal protocol overhead.