7,989 research outputs found
Living on the Edge: The Role of Proactive Caching in 5G Wireless Networks
This article explores one of the key enablers of beyond 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 crucial role.
Firstly, in order to alleviate backhaul congestion, we propose a mechanism
whereby files are proactively cached during off-peak demands based on file
popularity and correlations among users and files patterns. Secondly,
leveraging social networks and device-to-device (D2D) communications, we
propose a procedure that exploits the social structure of the network by
predicting the set of influential users to (proactively) cache strategic
contents and disseminate them to their social ties via D2D communications.
Exploiting this proactive caching paradigm, numerical results show that
important gains can be obtained for each case study, with backhaul savings and
a higher ratio of satisfied users of up to and , respectively.
Higher gains can be further obtained by increasing the storage capability at
the network edge.Comment: accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Magazin
Innovation in Mobile Learning: A European Perspective
In the evolving landscape of mobile learning, European researchers have conducted significant mobile learning projects, representing a distinct perspective on mobile learning research and development. Our paper aims to explore how these projects have arisen, showing the driving forces of European innovation in mobile learning. We propose context as a central construct in mobile learning and examine theories of learning for the mobile world, based on physical, technological, conceptual, social and temporal mobility. We also examine the impacts of mobile learning research on educational practices and the implications for policy. Throughout, we identify lessons learnt from European experiences to date
From MANET to people-centric networking: Milestones and open research challenges
In this paper, we discuss the state of the art of (mobile) multi-hop ad hoc networking with the aim to present the current status of the research activities and identify the consolidated research areas, with limited research opportunities, and the hot and emerging research areas for which further research is required. We start by briefly discussing the MANET paradigm, and why the research on MANET protocols is now a cold research topic. Then we analyze the active research areas. Specifically, after discussing the wireless-network technologies, we analyze four successful ad hoc networking paradigms, mesh networks, opportunistic networks, vehicular networks, and sensor networks that emerged from the MANET world. We also present an emerging research direction in the multi-hop ad hoc networking field: people centric networking, triggered by the increasing penetration of the smartphones in everyday life, which is generating a people-centric revolution in computing and communications
Soft Cache Hits and the Impact of Alternative Content Recommendations on Mobile Edge Caching
Caching popular content at the edge of future mobile networks has been widely
considered in order to alleviate the impact of the data tsunami on both the
access and backhaul networks. A number of interesting techniques have been
proposed, including femto-caching and "delayed" or opportunistic cache access.
Nevertheless, the majority of these approaches suffer from the rather limited
storage capacity of the edge caches, compared to the tremendous and rapidly
increasing size of the Internet content catalog. We propose to depart from the
assumption of hard cache misses, common in most existing works, and consider
"soft" cache misses, where if the original content is not available, an
alternative content that is locally cached can be recommended. Given that
Internet content consumption is increasingly entertainment-oriented, we believe
that a related content could often lead to complete or at least partial user
satisfaction, without the need to retrieve the original content over expensive
links. In this paper, we formulate the problem of optimal edge caching with
soft cache hits, in the context of delayed access, and analyze the expected
gains. We then show using synthetic and real datasets of related video contents
that promising caching gains could be achieved in practice
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