Supporting smart electric vehicle charging with information-centric networking

Inspired by the proliferation of content-centric applications in the Internet, Information-Centric Networking (ICN) has emerged as a promising networking paradigm. Focusing on the delivery of content instead of the pairwise communication between end-hosts, ICN inherently supports location-independent content/information distribution, through the means of in-network caching and multicast; as well as mobile computing. However, so far the vast majority of ICN research efforts have mostly focused on the design of sound and scalable architectures and protocols for the current Internet application landscape. In this paper, we revisit ICN in the context of a radically different application environment of smart grids and in particular, the case of smart charging of electric vehicles. Based on a thorough description of the currently forming application environment in the Netherlands, we highlight the inefficiencies resulting from a host-centric model. We then show how ICN can address these limitations and ultimately support quality and security in such application environment. Besides qualitative benefits, our preliminary analysis also demonstrates that ICN can substantially reduce communication and security complexity, thus fostering the development and widespread adoption of the smart charging application.