CCSDN: content-centric software defined networking applied for 5G content distribution in autonomous vehicles

Content-Centric Networks (CCN) represent a major shift in access to the global computer network, prioritizing content over end-device communication. Most of the currently delivered content comes from Video-on-Demand (VoD) and entertainment publishers. Such content is delivered over the Internet through Content Delivery Networks (CDN), where several content replica servers are implemented. In parallel, 5G networks have driven the development of new services and applications, including autonomous vehicles. Soon, this type of service could be implemented on a large scale in smart cities. In this context, passengers of autonomous vehicles will be able to utilize their free travel time to access entertainment content, thereby generating a significant demand for traffic on 5G/6G networks. This work proposes and evaluates an hybrid SDN–CCN architecture for access control and efficient content delivery in 5G mobile fog-enabled applications, using the CCN paradigm. The objective of the proposed architecture is to reduce the latency of delivering entertainment content to users moving within the 5G network, taking into account the context of autonomous vehicles. Simulations showed that this approach significantly reduces latency, improves scalability, and optimizes bandwidth usage, outperforming solutions based solely on TCP/IP, SDN, or CCN individually. Simulation results demonstrate significant performance gains, including up to 57% reduction in average latency, 35% improvement in throughput, and approximately 20% reduction in bandwidth consumption compared to baseline architectures. Companies can benefit by adopting this model in connected mobility systems and autonomous vehicles, enabling new services based on dynamic caching, intelligent routing, and personalized access control.