6 research outputs found
Delivery latency trade-offs of heterogeneous contents in fog radio access networks
A Fog Radio Access Network (F-RAN) is a cellular wireless system that enables
content delivery via the caching of popular content at edge nodes (ENs) and
cloud processing. The existing information-theoretic analyses of F-RAN systems,
and special cases thereof, make the assumption that all requests should be
guaranteed the same delivery latency, which results in identical latency for
all files in the content library. In practice, however, contents may have
heterogeneous timeliness requirements depending on the applications that
operate on them. Given per-EN cache capacity constraint, there exists a
fundamental trade-off among the delivery latencies of different users'
requests, since contents that are allocated more cache space generally enjoy
lower delivery latencies. For the case with two ENs and two users, the optimal
latency trade-off is characterized in the high-SNR regime in terms of the
Normalized Delivery Time (NDT) metric. The main results are illustrated by
numerical examples
How Much Can D2D Communication Reduce Content Delivery Latency in Fog Networks with Edge Caching?
A Fog-Radio Access Network (F-RAN) is studied in which cache-enabled Edge
Nodes (ENs) with dedicated fronthaul connections to the cloud aim at delivering
contents to mobile users. Using an information-theoretic approach, this work
tackles the problem of quantifying the potential latency reduction that can be
obtained by enabling Device-to-Device (D2D) communication over out-of-band
broadcast links. Following prior work, the Normalized Delivery Time (NDT) --- a
metric that captures the high signal-to-noise ratio worst-case latency --- is
adopted as the performance criterion of interest. Joint edge caching, downlink
transmission, and D2D communication policies based on compress-and-forward are
proposed that are shown to be information-theoretically optimal to within a
constant multiplicative factor of two for all values of the problem parameters,
and to achieve the minimum NDT for a number of special cases. The analysis
provides insights on the role of D2D cooperation in improving the delivery
latency.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Communication
Fundamental Limits of Cloud and Cache-Aided Interference Management with Multi-Antenna Edge Nodes
In fog-aided cellular systems, content delivery latency can be minimized by
jointly optimizing edge caching and transmission strategies. In order to
account for the cache capacity limitations at the Edge Nodes (ENs),
transmission generally involves both fronthaul transfer from a cloud processor
with access to the content library to the ENs, as well as wireless delivery
from the ENs to the users. In this paper, the resulting problem is studied from
an information-theoretic viewpoint by making the following practically relevant
assumptions: 1) the ENs have multiple antennas; 2) only uncoded fractional
caching is allowed; 3) the fronthaul links are used to send fractions of
contents; and 4) the ENs are constrained to use one-shot linear precoding on
the wireless channel. Assuming offline proactive caching and focusing on a high
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) latency metric, the optimal information-theoretic
performance is investigated under both serial and pipelined fronthaul-edge
transmission modes. The analysis characterizes the minimum high-SNR latency in
terms of Normalized Delivery Time (NDT) for worst-case users' demands. The
characterization is exact for a subset of system parameters, and is generally
optimal within a multiplicative factor of 3/2 for the serial case and of 2 for
the pipelined case. The results bring insights into the optimal interplay
between edge and cloud processing in fog-aided wireless networks as a function
of system resources, including the number of antennas at the ENs, the ENs'
cache capacity and the fronthaul capacity.Comment: 34 pages, 15 figures, submitte
Online edge caching and wireless delivery in fog-aided networks
Multimedia content is the significant fraction of transferred data over the wireless medium in the modern cellular and wireless communication networks. To improve the quality of experience perceived by users, one promising solution is to push the most popular contents as close as to users, also known as the edge of network. Storing content at the edge nodes (ENs) or base stations (BSs) is called caching . In Fog Radio Access Network (F-RAN), each EN is equipped with a cache as well as a fronthaul connection to the content server. Among the new design problems raised by the outlined scenarios, two key issues are addressed in this dissertation: 1) How to utilize cache and fronthaul resources while taking into account the wireless channel impairments; 2) How to incorporate the time-variability of popular set in the performance evaluation of F-RAN. These aspects are investigated by using information-theoretic models, obtaining fundamental insights that have been corroborated by various illustrative examples. To address point 1), two scenarios are investigated. First, a single-cell scenario with two transmitters is considered. A fog-aided small-cell BS as one of the transmitters and a cloud-aided macro-cell BS as the second transmitter collaborate with each other to send the requested content over a partially connected wireless channel. The intended and interference channels are modeled by erasure channels. Assuming a static set of popular contents, offline caching maps the library of files to cached contents stored at small-cell BS such that the cache capacity requirement is met. The delivery time per bit (DTB) is adopted as a measure of the coding latency, that is, the duration of the transmission block, required for reliable delivery. It is proved that optimal DTB is a linear decreasing function of cache capacity as well as inversely proportional with capacity of fronthaul link. In the second scenario, the same single-cell model is used with the only caveat that the set of popular files is time-varying. In this case, online caching maps the library of files to cached contents at small-cell BS. Thanks to availability of popular set at macro-BS, the DTB is finite and has upper and lower bounds which are functions of system resources i.e., cache and fronthaul link capacities. As for point 2), the model is comprised of an arbitrary number of ENs and users connected through an interference-limited wireless channel at high-SNR regime. All equally important ENs are benefited from cache capacity as well as fronthaul connection to the content server. The time-variability of popular set necessitates online caching to enable ENs keep track of changes in the popular set. The analysis is centered on the characterization of the long-term Normalized Delivery Time (NDT), which captures the temporal dependence of the coding latencies accrued across multiple time slots in the high-SNR regime. Online edge caching and delivery schemes based on reactive and proactive caching principles are investigated for both serial and pipelined transmission modes across fronthaul and edge segments. The outcome of analytical results provides a controversial view of contemporary research on the edge caching. It is proved that with a time-varying set of popular files, the capacity of fronthaul link between ENs and content server set a fundamental limit on the system performance. This is due to the fact that the original information source is content server and the only way to retrieve information is via fronthaul links. While edge caching can provide some gains in term of reduced latency, the gain diminishes as a result of the fact that the cached content is prone to be outdated with time-varying popularity