Publish-Subscribe Communication in Building Management Systems over Named Data Networking

Publish-subscribe (pub-sub) has been recognized as a common communication pattern in IoT applications. In this paper we present ndnBMS-PS, a distributed pub-sub communication framework for building management systems (BMS), an important area of IoT, over the Named Data Networking (NDN) architecture. ndnBMS-PS utilizes distributed NDN repositories to store and republish large quantities of BMS data that can be consumed by different applications. It employs a data synchronization mechanism to aggregate multiple data streams published by multiple sensing devices and achieve efficient notification of new data for the consumers. ndnBMS-PS also provides data authentication by utilizing NDN's security building blocks. This design exercise demonstrates that the information-centric architecture enables a simple design for complex IoT systems and provides superior system efficiency and security over TCP/IP-based alternatives.