Design and analysis of network coding schemes for efficient fronthaul offloading of fog-radio access networks

In the era of the Internet of Things (IoT), everything will be connected. Smart homes and cities, connected cars, smart agriculture, wearable technologies, smart healthcare, smart sport, and fitness are all becoming a reality. However, the current cloud architecture cannot manage the tremendous number of connected devices and skyrocketing data traffic while providing the speeds promised by 5G and beyond. Centralised cloud data centres are physically too far from where the data originate (edge of the network), inevitably leading to data transmission speeds that are too slow for delay-sensitive applications. Thus, researchers have proposed fog architecture as a solution to the ever-increasing number of connected devices and data traffic. The main idea of fog architecture is to bring content physically closer to end users, thus reducing data transmission times. This thesis considers a type of fog architecture in which smart end devices have storage and processing capabilities and can communicate and collaborate with each other. The major goal of this thesis is to develop methods of efficiently governing communication and collaboration between smart end devices so that their requests to upper network layers are minimised. This is achieved by incorporating principles from graph theory, network coding and machine learning to model the problem and design efficient network-coded scheduling algorithms to further enhance achieved performance. By maximising end users' self-sufficiency, the load on the system is decreased and its capacity increased. This will allow the central processing unit to manage more devices which is vital, given that more than 29 billion devices will connect to the infrastructure by 2023 \cite{Cisco1823}. Specifically, given that the limitations of the smart end devices and the system in general lead to various communication conflicts, a novel network coding graph is developed that takes into account all possible conflicts and enables the search for an efficient feasible solution. The thesis designs heuristic algorithms that search for the solution over the novel network coding graph, investigates the complexity of the proposed algorithms, and shows the offloading strategy's asymptotic optimality. Although the main aim of this work is to decrease the involvement of upper fog layers in serving smart end devices, it also takes into account how much energy end devices would use during collaborations. Unfortunately, a higher system capacity comes at the price of more energy spent by smart end devices; thus, service providers' interests and end users' interests are conflicting. Finally, this thesis investigates how multihop communication between end devices influences the offloading of upper fog layers. Smart end devices are equipped with machine learning capabilities that allow them to find efficient paths to their peers, further improving offloading. In conclusion, the work in this thesis shows that by smartly designing and scheduling communication between end devices, it is possible to significantly reduce the load on the system, increase its capacity and achieve fast transmissions between end devices, allowing them to run latency-critical applications

Cooperative Multi-Bitrate Video Caching and Transcoding in Multicarrier NOMA-Assisted Heterogeneous Virtualized MEC Networks

Cooperative video caching and transcoding in mobile edge computing (MEC) networks is a new paradigm for future wireless networks, e.g., 5G and 5G beyond, to reduce scarce and expensive backhaul resource usage by prefetching video files within radio access networks (RANs). Integration of this technique with other advent technologies, such as wireless network virtualization and multicarrier non-orthogonal multiple access (MC-NOMA), provides more flexible video delivery opportunities, which leads to enhancements both for the network's revenue and for the end-users' service experience. In this regard, we propose a two-phase RAF for a parallel cooperative joint multi-bitrate video caching and transcoding in heterogeneous virtualized MEC networks. In the cache placement phase, we propose novel proactive delivery-aware cache placement strategies (DACPSs) by jointly allocating physical and radio resources based on network stochastic information to exploit flexible delivery opportunities. Then, for the delivery phase, we propose a delivery policy based on the user requests and network channel conditions. The optimization problems corresponding to both phases aim to maximize the total revenue of network slices, i.e., virtual networks. Both problems are non-convex and suffer from high-computational complexities. For each phase, we show how the problem can be solved efficiently. We also propose a low-complexity RAF in which the complexity of the delivery algorithm is significantly reduced. A Delivery-aware cache refreshment strategy (DACRS) in the delivery phase is also proposed to tackle the dynamically changes of network stochastic information. Extensive numerical assessments demonstrate a performance improvement of up to 30% for our proposed DACPSs and DACRS over traditional approaches.Comment: 53 pages, 24 figure

Emerging Edge Computing Technologies for Distributed Internet of Things (IoT) Systems

The ever-increasing growth in the number of connected smart devices and various Internet of Things (IoT) verticals is leading to a crucial challenge of handling massive amount of raw data generated from distributed IoT systems and providing real-time feedback to the end-users. Although existing cloud-computing paradigm has an enormous amount of virtual computing power and storage capacity, it is not suitable for latency-sensitive applications and distributed systems due to the involved latency and its centralized mode of operation. To this end, edge/fog computing has recently emerged as the next generation of computing systems for extending cloud-computing functions to the edges of the network. Despite several benefits of edge computing such as geo-distribution, mobility support and location awareness, various communication and computing related challenges need to be addressed in realizing edge computing technologies for future IoT systems. In this regard, this paper provides a holistic view on the current issues and effective solutions by classifying the emerging technologies in regard to the joint coordination of radio and computing resources, system optimization and intelligent resource management. Furthermore, an optimization framework for edge-IoT systems is proposed to enhance various performance metrics such as throughput, delay, resource utilization and energy consumption. Finally, a Machine Learning (ML) based case study is presented along with some numerical results to illustrate the significance of edge computing.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, submitted to IEEE Wireless Communications Magazin

A Survey of Deep Learning for Data Caching in Edge Network

The concept of edge caching provision in emerging 5G and beyond mobile networks is a promising method to deal both with the traffic congestion problem in the core network as well as reducing latency to access popular content. In that respect end user demand for popular content can be satisfied by proactively caching it at the network edge, i.e, at close proximity to the users. In addition to model based caching schemes learning-based edge caching optimizations has recently attracted significant attention and the aim hereafter is to capture these recent advances for both model based and data driven techniques in the area of proactive caching. This paper summarizes the utilization of deep learning for data caching in edge network. We first outline the typical research topics in content caching and formulate a taxonomy based on network hierarchical structure. Then, a number of key types of deep learning algorithms are presented, ranging from supervised learning to unsupervised learning as well as reinforcement learning. Furthermore, a comparison of state-of-the-art literature is provided from the aspects of caching topics and deep learning methods. Finally, we discuss research challenges and future directions of applying deep learning for cachin

A review on green caching strategies for next generation communication networks

© 2020 IEEE. In recent years, the ever-increasing demand for networking resources and energy, fueled by the unprecedented upsurge in Internet traffic, has been a cause for concern for many service providers. Content caching, which serves user requests locally, is deemed to be an enabling technology in addressing the challenges offered by the phenomenal growth in Internet traffic. Conventionally, content caching is considered as a viable solution to alleviate the backhaul pressure. However, recently, many studies have reported energy cost reductions contributed by content caching in cache-equipped networks. The hypothesis is that caching shortens content delivery distance and eventually achieves significant reduction in transmission energy consumption. This has motivated us to conduct this study and in this article, a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art green caching techniques is provided. This review paper extensively discusses contributions of the existing studies on green caching. In addition, the study explores different cache-equipped network types, solution methods, and application scenarios. We categorically present that the optimal selection of the caching nodes, smart resource management, popular content selection, and renewable energy integration can substantially improve energy efficiency of the cache-equipped systems. In addition, based on the comprehensive analysis, we also highlight some potential research ideas relevant to green content caching