Predictive-Driven Edge Caching for Proactive Producer Mobility Management in 6G-Enabled Named Data Networking

The rapid evolution of 6G networks introduces extreme mobility, ultra-low latency, and dense edge deployments, posing significant challenges for Named Data Networking (NDN), particularly in supporting mobile producers. This paper presents ICMP (Intelligent Caching and Mobility Prediction), a prediction-driven edge caching framework that proactively manages producer mobility by integrating predictive mobility models with adaptive cache placement and forwarding-plane adaptation. Unlike prior approaches that treat mobility prediction as a reactive routing aid, ICMP anticipates producer movement to pre-position content at edge caches, reducing handoff latency, signaling overhead, and retrieval delays. Extensive ndnSIM-based simulations demonstrate that ICMP achieves 25–40% higher cache-hit ratios, ~30% lower handoff latency, and ~40% lower signaling overhead compared to conventional caching and mobility management schemes, while maintaining scalability under increasing producer density and consumer demand. The results confirm that coupling prediction with proactive edge caching provides a practical, mobility-resilient solution for latency-sensitive 6G NDN applications, including autonomous vehicles, UAV communications, and immersive AR/VR services.