Correlation-Aware Distributed Caching and Coded Delivery

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 accounts for the correlation among the content files. It is shown how joint file compression during the caching and delivery phases can provide load reductions that go beyond those achieved with existing schemes. This is accomplished through a lower bound on the fundamental rate-memory trade-off as well as a correlation-aware achievable scheme, shown to significantly outperform state-of-the-art correlation-unaware solutions, while approaching the limiting rate-memory trade-off.Comment: In proceeding of IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW), 201

Malleable Coding with Fixed Reuse

In cloud computing, storage area networks, remote backup storage, and similar settings, stored data is modified with updates from new versions. Representing information and modifying the representation are both expensive. Therefore it is desirable for the data to not only be compressed but to also be easily modified during updates. A malleable coding scheme considers both compression efficiency and ease of alteration, promoting codeword reuse. We examine the trade-off between compression efficiency and malleability cost-the difficulty of synchronizing compressed versions-measured as the length of a reused prefix portion. Through a coding theorem, the region of achievable rates and malleability is expressed as a single-letter optimization. Relationships to common information problems are also described

On practical design for joint distributed source and network coding

This paper considers the problem of communicating correlated information from multiple source nodes over a network of noiseless channels to multiple destination nodes, where each destination node wants to recover all sources. The problem involves a joint consideration of distributed compression and network information relaying. Although the optimal rate region has been theoretically characterized, it was not clear how to design practical communication schemes with low complexity. This work provides a partial solution to this problem by proposing a low-complexity scheme for the special case with two sources whose correlation is characterized by a binary symmetric channel. Our scheme is based on a careful combination of linear syndrome-based Slepian-Wolf coding and random linear mixing (network coding). It is in general suboptimal; however, its low complexity and robustness to network dynamics make it suitable for practical implementation

Malleable coding for updatable cloud caching

In software-as-a-service applications provisioned through cloud computing, locally cached data are often modified with updates from new versions. In some cases, with each edit, one may want to preserve both the original and new versions. In this paper, we focus on cases in which only the latest version must be preserved. Furthermore, it is desirable for the data to not only be compressed but to also be easily modified during updates, since representing information and modifying the representation both incur cost. We examine whether it is possible to have both compression efficiency and ease of alteration, in order to promote codeword reuse. In other words, we study the feasibility of a malleable and efficient coding scheme. The tradeoff between compression efficiency and malleability cost-the difficulty of synchronizing compressed versions-is measured as the length of a reused prefix portion. The region of achievable rates and malleability is found. Drawing from prior work on common information problems, we show that efficient data compression may not be the best engineering design principle when storing software-as-a-service data. In the general case, goals of efficiency and malleability are fundamentally in conflict.This work was supported in part by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (LRV), Grant CCR-0325774, and Grant CCF-0729069. This work was presented at the 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory [1] and the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering [2]. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was R. Thobaben. (CCR-0325774 - NSF Graduate Research Fellowship; CCF-0729069 - NSF Graduate Research Fellowship)Accepted manuscrip

Cache-Aided Coded Multicast for Correlated Sources

The combination of edge caching and coded multicasting is a promising approach to improve the efficiency of content delivery over cache-aided networks. The global caching gain resulting from content overlap distributed across the network in current solutions is limited due to the increasingly personalized nature of the content consumed by users. In this paper, the cache-aided coded multicast problem is generalized to account for the correlation among the network content by formulating a source compression problem with distributed side information. A correlation-aware achievable scheme is proposed and an upper bound on its performance is derived. It is shown that considerable load reductions can be achieved, compared to state of the art correlation-unaware schemes, when caching and delivery phases specifically account for the correlation among the content files.Comment: In proceeding of IEEE International Symposium on Turbo Codes and Iterative Information Processing (ISTC), 201