This article explores one of the key enablers of beyond 4G 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 22% and 26%, respectively.
Higher gains can be further obtained by increasing the storage capability at
the network edge.Comment: accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Magazin