Caching at mobile devices can facilitate device-to-device (D2D) communications, which may significantly improve spectrum efficiency and alleviate the heavy burden on backhaul links. However, most previous works ignored user mobility, thus having limited practical applications. In this paper, we take advantage of the user mobility pattern by the inter-contact times between different users, and propose a mobility-aware caching placement strategy to maximize the data offloading ratio, which is defined as the percentage of the requested data that can be delivered via D2D links rather than through base stations (BSs). Given the NP-hard caching placement problem, we first propose an optimal dynamic programming (DP) algorithm to obtain a performance benchmark, but with much lower complexity than exhaustive search. We will then prove that the problem falls in the category of monotone submodular maximization over a matroid constraint, and propose a time-efficient greedy algorithm, which achieves an approximation ratio as 1/2. Simulation results with real-life data-sets will validate the effectiveness of our proposed mobility-aware caching placement strategy. We observe that users moving at either a very low or very high speed should cache the most popular files, while users moving at a medium speed should cache less popular files to avoid duplication.
As mobile services are shifting from "connection-centric" communications to "content-centric" communications, content-centric wireless networking emerges as a promising paradigm to evolve the current network architecture. Caching popular content at the wireless edge, including base stations (BSs) and user terminals (UTs), provides an effective approach to alleviate the heavy burden on backhaul links, as well as lowering delays and deployment costs. In contrast to wired networks, a unique characteristic of content-centric wireless networks (CCWNs) is the mobility of mobile users. While it has r…
In heterogeneous cellular networks with caching capability, due to mobility of users and storage constraints of small-cell base stations (SBSs), users may not be able to download all of their requested content from the SBSs within the delay deadline of the content. In that case, the users are directed to the macro-cell base station (MBS) in order to satisfy the service quality requirement. Coded caching is exploited here to minimize the amount of data downloaded from the MBS taking into account the mobility of the users as well as the popularity of the contents. An optimal distributed caching …
One of the most promising approaches to overcome the uncertainty and dynamic channel variations of millimeter wave (mmW) communications is to deploy dual-mode base stations that integrate both mmW and microwave ($μ$W) frequencies. In particular, if properly designed, such dual-mode base stations can enhance mobility and handover in highly mobile wireless environments. In this paper, a novel approach for analyzing and managing mobility in joint $μ$W-mmW networks is proposed. The proposed approach leverages device-level caching along with the capabilities of dual-mode base stations to minimize h…
User mobility has a large effect on optimal content placement in D2D caching networks. Since a typical user can communicate neighboring users who stay in the D2D communication area of the typical user, the optimal content placement should be changed according to the user mobility. Under consideration of randomness of incoming and outgoing users, we formulate an optimization problem to minimize the average data load of a BS. It is proved that minimization of the average data load of a BS can be transformed to maximization of a monotonic submodular function with a matroid constraint, for which a…
We consider a service cost minimization problem for resource-constrained small-cell networks with caching, where the challenge mainly stems from (i) the insufficient backhaul capacity and limited network bandwidth and (ii) the limited storing capacity of small-cell base stations (SBSs). Besides, the optimization problem is NP-hard since both the users' mobility patterns and content preferences are unknown. In this paper, we develop a novel mobility-aware joint routing and caching strategy to address the challenges. The designed framework divides the entire geographical area into small sections…
Caching at mobile devices, accompanied by device-to-device (D2D) communications, is one promising technique to accommodate the exponentially increasing mobile data traffic. While most previous works ignored user mobility, there are some recent works taking it into account. However, the duration of user contact times has been ignored, making it difficult to explicitly characterize the effect of mobility. In this paper, we adopt the alternating renewal process to model the duration of both the contact and inter-contact times, and investigate how the caching performance is affected by mobility. T…
We consider a distributed caching device-to-device (D2D) network in which a user's file of interest is cached as several portions in the storage of other devices in the network. Assuming that the user needs to obtain all these file portions, the portions cached farther away naturally become the performance bottleneck. This is due to the fact that dominant interferers may be closer to the receiver than the serving device. Using a simple stochastic geometry model, we concretely demonstrate that this bottleneck can be loosened if the users are mobile. Gains obtained from mobility are quantified i…
One of the most promising approaches to overcome the uncertainty and dynamic channel variations of millimeter wave (mmW) communications is to deploy dual-mode base stations that integrate both mmW and microwave ($μ$W) frequencies. If properly designed, such dual-mode base stations can enhance mobility and handover in highly mobile wireless environments. In this paper, a novel approach for analyzing and managing mobility in joint $μ$W-mmW networks is proposed. The proposed approach leverages device-level caching along with the capabilities of dual-mode base stations to minimize handover failure…
In this paper, the problem of proactive caching is studied for cloud radio access networks (CRANs). In the studied model, the baseband units (BBUs) can predict the content request distribution and mobility pattern of each user, determine which content to cache at remote radio heads and BBUs. This problem is formulated as an optimization problem which jointly incorporates backhaul and fronthaul loads and content caching. To solve this problem, an algorithm that combines the machine learning framework of echo state networks with sublinear algorithms is proposed. Using echo state networks (ESNs),…
A large-scale content-centric mobile ad hoc network employing subpacketization is studied in which each mobile node having finite-size cache moves according to the reshuffling mobility model and requests a content object from the library independently at random according to the Zipf popularity distribution. Instead of assuming that one content object is transferred in a single time slot, we consider a more challenging scenario where the size of each content object is considerably large and thus only a subpacket of a file can be delivered during one time slot, which is motivated by a fast mobil…
Caching popular content at mobile devices, accompanied by device-to-device (D2D) communications, is one promising technology for effective mobile content delivery. User mobility is an important factor when investigating such networks, which unfortunately was largely ignored in most previous works. Preliminary studies have been carried out, but the effect of mobility on the caching performance has not been fully understood. In this paper, by explicitly considering users' contact and inter-contact durations via an alternating renewal process, we first investigate the effect of mobility with a gi…
To make better use of file diversity provided by random caching and improve the successful transmission probability (STP) of a file, we consider retransmissions with random discontinuous transmission (DTX) in a large-scale cache-enabled heterogeneous wireless network (HetNet) employing random caching. We analyze and optimize the STP in two mobility scenarios, i.e., the high mobility scenario and the static scenario. First, in each scenario, by using tools from stochastic geometry, we obtain the closed-form expressions for the STP in the general and low signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) thresh…
As the capacity demand of mobile applications keeps increasing, the backhaul network is becoming a bottleneck to support high quality of experience (QoE) in next-generation wireless networks. Content caching at base stations (BSs) is a promising approach to alleviate the backhaul burden and reduce user-perceived latency. In this paper, we consider a wireless caching network where all the BSs are connected to a central controller via backhaul links. In such a network, users can obtain the required data from candidate BSs if the data are pre-cached. Otherwise, the user data need to be first retr…
Caching popular contents at mobile devices, assisted by device-to-device (D2D) communications, is considered as a promising technique for mobile content delivery. It can effectively reduce backhaul traffic and service cost, as well as improving the spectrum efficiency. However, due to the selfishness of mobile users, incentive mechanisms will be needed to motivate device caching. In this paper, we investigate incentive mechanism design in cache-assisted D2D networks, taking advantage of the user mobility information. An inter-contact model is adopted to capture the average time between two con…
We consider the caching of content in the mobile devices in a dense wireless network using maximum distance separable (MDS) codes. We focus on an area, served by a base station (BS), where mobile devices move around according to a random mobility model. Users requesting a particular file download coded packets from caching devices within a communication range, using device-to-device communication. If additional packets are required to decode the file, these are downloaded from the BS. We analyze the device mobility and derive a good approximation of the distribution of caching devices within t…
Mobile edge caching can effectively reduce service delay but may introduce information staleness, calling for timely content refreshing. However, content refreshing consumes additional transmission resources and may degrade the delay performance of mobile systems. In this work, we propose a freshness-aware refreshing scheme to balance the service delay and content freshness measured by Age of Information (AoI). Specifically, the cached content items will be refreshed to the up-to-date version upon user requests if the AoI exceeds a certain threshold (named as refreshing window). The average Ao…
Recently, wireless caching techniques have been studied to satisfy lower delay requirements and offload traffic from peak periods. By storing parts of the popular files at the mobile users, users can locate some of their requested files in their own caches or the caches at their neighbors. In the latter case, when a user receives files from its neighbors, device-to-device (D2D) communication is enabled. D2D communication underlaid with cellular networks is also a new paradigm for the upcoming 5G wireless systems. By allowing a pair of adjacent D2D users to communicate directly, D2D communicati…
In this paper, the problem of proactive deployment of cache-enabled unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for optimizing the quality-of-experience (QoE) of wireless devices in a cloud radio access network (CRAN) is studied. In the considered model, the network can leverage human-centric information such as users' visited locations, requested contents, gender, job, and device type to predict the content request distribution and mobility pattern of each user. Then, given these behavior predictions, the proposed approach seeks to find the user-UAV associations, the optimal UAVs' locations, and the cont…
Cellular data traffic almost doubles every year, greatly straining network capacity. The main driver for this development is wireless video. Traditional methods for capacity increase (like using more spectrum and increasing base station density) are very costly, and do not exploit the unique features of video, in particular a high degree of {\em asynchronous content reuse}. In this paper we give an overview of our work that proposed and detailed a new transmission paradigm exploiting content reuse, and the fact that storage is the fastest-increasing quantity in modern hardware. Our network str…
Cache-aided coded multicast leverages side information at wireless edge caches to efficiently serve multiple groupcast demands via common multicast transmissions, leading to load reductions that are proportional to the aggregate cache size. However, the increasingly unpredictable and personalized nature of the content that users consume challenges the efficiency of existing caching-based solutions in which only exact content reuse is explored. This paper generalizes the cache-aided coded multicast problem to a source compression with distributed side information problem that specifically accou…
In this work, we study the trade-off between the cache capacity and the user delay for a cooperative Small Base Station (SBS) coded caching system with mobile users. First, a delay-aware coded caching policy, which takes into account the popularity of the files and the maximum re-buffering delay to minimize the average rebuffering delay of a mobile user under a given cache capacity constraint is introduced. Subsequently, we address a scenario where some files are served by the macro-cell base station (MBS) when the cache capacity of the SBSs is not sufficient to store all the files in the libr…
The unprecedented growth of internet contents, specially social media, invoking a challenge to the load of cellular networks. In addition, nowadays, the demands of quality of experience (QoE) became a more practical norm in contrast of quality of service (QoS), in which downloading delay is an important factor of it. To satisfy this demand, we propose two resource allocation (RA) algorithms to optimize the place of social media in the cache of the Base stations (BSs) and radio resources (i.e., transmit powers and subcarriers), jointly in a multi-cell Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Acce…
Most results on coded caching focus on a static scenario, in which a fixed number of users synchronously place their requests from a content library, and the performance is measured in terms of the latency in satisfying all of these demands. In practice, however, users start watching an online video content asynchronously over time, and often abort watching a video before it is completed. The latter behaviour is captured by the notion of audience retention rate, which measures the portion of a video content watched on average. In order to bring coded caching one step closer to practice, asynch…
In this paper, we propose a novel policy for device caching that facilitates popular content exchange through high-rate device-to-device (D2D) millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication. The D2D-aware caching (DAC) policy splits the cacheable content into two content groups and distributes it randomly to the user equipment devices (UEs), with the goal to enable D2D connections. By exploiting the high bandwidth availability and the directionality of mmWaves, we ensure high rates for the D2D transmissions, while mitigating the co-channel interference that limits the throughput gains of D2D communica…
Recently, wireless edge caching has been emerged as a promising technology for future wireless networks to cope with exponentially increasing demands for high data rate and low latency multimedia services by proactively storing contents at the network edge. Here, we aim to design efficient cache placement and delivery strategies for an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)-based cache-enabled heterogeneous cellular network (C-HetNet) which operates in two separated phases: caching phase (CP) and delivery phase (DP). Since guaranteeing fairness among mobile users (MUs) is not we…
Future Internet usage will be dominated by the consumption of a rich variety of online multimedia services accessed from an exponentially growing number of multimedia capable mobile devices. As such, future Internet designs will be challenged to provide solutions that can deliver bandwidth-intensive, delay-sensitive, on-demand video-based services over increasingly crowded, bandwidth-limited wireless access networks. One of the main reasons for the bandwidth stress facing wireless network operators is the difficulty to exploit the multicast nature of the wireless medium when wireless users or …
In cellular networks, the densification of connected devices and base stations engender the ever-growing traffic intensity, and caching popular contents with smart management is a promising way to alleviate such consequences. Our research extends the previously proposed analysis of three-tier cache enabled Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets). The main contributions are threefold. We consider the more realistic assumption; that is, the distribution of small base stations is following Poisson-Poisson cluster processes, which reflects the real situations of geographic restriction, user dense areas, …
Recently, wireless caching techniques have been studied to satisfy lower delay requirements and offload traffic from peak periods. By storing parts of the popular files at the mobile users, users can locate some of their requested files in their own caches or the caches at their neighbors. In the latter case, when a user receives files from its neighbors, device-to-device(D2D) communication is performed. D2D communication underlaid with cellular networks is also a new paradigm for the upcoming wireless systems. By allowing a pair of adjacent D2D users to communicate directly, D2D communication…
360$^o$ video is an essential component of VR/AR/MR systems that provides immersive experience to the users. However, 360$^o$ video is associated with high bandwidth requirements. The required bandwidth can be reduced by exploiting the fact that users are interested in viewing only a part of the video scene and that users request viewports that overlap with each other. Motivated by the findings of recent works where the benefits of caching video tiles at edge servers instead of caching entire 360$^o$ videos were shown, in this paper, we introduce the concept of virtual viewports that have the …
Endowed with context-awareness and proactive capabilities, caching users' content locally at the edge of the network is able to cope with increasing data traffic demand in 5G wireless networks. In this work, we focus on the energy consumption aspects of cache-enabled wireless cellular networks, specifically in terms of area power consumption (APC) and energy efficiency (EE). We assume that both base stations (BSs) and mobile users are distributed according to homogeneous Poisson point processes (PPPs) and we introduce a detailed power model that takes into account caching. We study the conditi…
This article explores one of the key enablers of beyond $4$G wireless networks leveraging small cell network deployments, namely proactive caching. Endowed with predictive capabilities and harnessing recent developments in storage, context-awareness and social networks, peak traffic demands can be substantially reduced by proactively serving predictable user demands, via caching at base stations and users' devices. In order to show the effectiveness of proactive caching, we examine two case studies which exploit the spatial and social structure of the network, where proactive caching plays a c…
Coded caching is a promising technique to smooth out network traffic by storing part of the library content at the users' local caches. The seminal work on coded caching for single file retrieval by Maddah-Ali and Niesen (MAN) showed the existence of a global caching gain that scales with the total memory in the system, in addition to the known local caching gain in uncoded systems. This paper formulates a novel cache-aided matrix multiplication retrieval problem, relevant for data analytics and machine learning applications. In the considered problem, each cache-aided user requests the produc…
Content caching at small-cell base stations (SBSs) is a promising method to mitigate the excessive backhaul load and delay, particularly for on-demand video streaming applications. A cache-enabled heterogeneous cellular network architecture is considered in this paper, where mobile users connect to multiple SBSs during a video downloading session, and the SBSs request files, or fragments of files, from the macro-cell base station (MBS) according to the user requests they receive. A novel coded storage and delivery scheme is introduced to reduce the load on the backhaul link from the MBS to the…
The deployment of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites with terrestrial networks can potentially increase the efficiency and reduce the cost of relaying content from a data center to a set of edge caches hosted by 6G and beyond enabled macro base stations. In this work, the characteristics of the communication system and the mobility of LEO satellites are thoroughly discussed to describe the channel characteristics of LEO satellites, in terms of their frequency bands, latency, Doppler shifts, fading effects, and satellite access. Three different scenarios are proposed for the relay of data from da…
In this paper, we consider multiple cache-enabled clients connected to multiple servers through an intermediate network. We design several topology-aware coding strategies for such networks. Based on topology richness of the intermediate network, and types of coding operations at internal nodes, we define three classes of networks, namely, dedicated, flexible, and linear networks. For each class, we propose an achievable coding scheme, analyze its coding delay, and also, compare it with an information theoretic lower bound. For flexible networks, we show that our scheme is order-optimal in ter…
The coded caching scheme originally proposed by Maddah-Ali and Niesen (MAN) transmits coded multicast messages from a server to users equipped with caches via a capacitated shared-link and was shown to be information theoretically optimal within a constant multiplicative factor. This work extends the MAN scheme to a class of two-hop wired-wireless networks including one server connected via fronthaul links to a layer of $H$ helper nodes (access points/base stations), which in turns communicate via a wireless access network to $K$ users, each equipped with its own cache. Two variants are consid…
With the growing demand for latency-critical and computation-intensive Internet of Things (IoT) services, the IoT-oriented network architecture, mobile edge computing (MEC), has emerged as a promising technique to reinforce the computation capability of the resource-constrained IoT devices. To exploit the cloud-like functions at the network edge, service caching has been implemented to reuse the computation task input/output data, thus effectively reducing the delay incurred by data retransmissions and repeated execution of the same task. In a multi-user cache-assisted MEC system, users' prefe…
