Fundamental Limits of Caching in Wireless D2D Networks

We consider a wireless Device-to-Device (D2D) network where communication is restricted to be single-hop. Users make arbitrary requests from a finite library of files and have pre-cached information on their devices, subject to a per-node storage capacity constraint. A similar problem has already been considered in an ``infrastructure'' setting, where all users receive a common multicast (coded) message from a single omniscient server (e.g., a base station having all the files in the library) through a shared bottleneck link. In this work, we consider a D2D ``infrastructure-less'' version of the problem. We propose a caching strategy based on deterministic assignment of subpackets of the library files, and a coded delivery strategy where the users send linearly coded messages to each other in order to collectively satisfy their demands. We also consider a random caching strategy, which is more suitable to a fully decentralized implementation. Under certain conditions, both approaches can achieve the information theoretic outer bound within a constant multiplicative factor. In our previous work, we showed that a caching D2D wireless network with one-hop communication, random caching, and uncoded delivery, achieves the same throughput scaling law of the infrastructure-based coded multicasting scheme, in the regime of large number of users and files in the library. This shows that the spatial reuse gain of the D2D network is order-equivalent to the coded multicasting gain of single base station transmission. It is therefore natural to ask whether these two gains are cumulative, i.e.,if a D2D network with both local communication (spatial reuse) and coded multicasting can provide an improved scaling law. Somewhat counterintuitively, we show that these gains do not cumulate (in terms of throughput scaling law).Comment: 45 pages, 5 figures, Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, This is the extended version of the conference (ITW) paper arXiv:1304.585

Caching with Unknown Popularity Profiles in Small Cell Networks

A heterogenous network is considered where the base stations (BSs), small base stations (SBSs) and users are distributed according to independent Poisson point processes (PPPs). We let the SBS nodes to posses high storage capacity and are assumed to form a distributed caching network. Popular data files are stored in the local cache of SBS, so that users can download the desired files from one of the SBS in the vicinity subject to availability. The offloading-loss is captured via a cost function that depends on a random caching strategy proposed in this paper. The cost function depends on the popularity profile, which is, in general, unknown. In this work, the popularity profile is estimated at the BS using the available instantaneous demands from the users in a time interval $[0,\tau]$. This is then used to find an estimate of the cost function from which the optimal random caching strategy is devised. The main results of this work are the following: First it is shown that the waiting time $\tau$ to achieve an $\epsilon>0$ difference between the achieved and optimal costs is finite, provided the user density is greater than a predefined threshold. In this case, $\tau$ is shown to scale as $N^2$, where $N$ is the support of the popularity profile. Secondly, a transfer learning-based approach is proposed to obtain an estimate of the popularity profile used to compute the empirical cost function. A condition is derived under which the proposed transfer learning-based approach performs better than the random caching strategy.Comment: 6 pages, Proceedings of IEEE Global Communications Conference, 201

A Learning-Based Approach to Caching in Heterogenous Small Cell Networks

A heterogenous network with base stations (BSs), small base stations (SBSs) and users distributed according to independent Poisson point processes is considered. SBS nodes are assumed to possess high storage capacity and to form a distributed caching network. Popular files are stored in local caches of SBSs, so that a user can download the desired files from one of the SBSs in its vicinity. The offloading-loss is captured via a cost function that depends on the random caching strategy proposed here. The popularity profile of cached content is unknown and estimated using instantaneous demands from users within a specified time interval. An estimate of the cost function is obtained from which an optimal random caching strategy is devised. The training time to achieve an $\epsilon>0$ difference between the achieved and optimal costs is finite provided the user density is greater than a predefined threshold, and scales as $N^2$, where $N$ is the support of the popularity profile. A transfer learning-based approach to improve this estimate is proposed. The training time is reduced when the popularity profile is modeled using a parametric family of distributions; the delay is independent of $N$ and scales linearly with the dimension of the distribution parameter.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, published in IEEE Transactions on Communications, 2016. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1504.0363