We consider the use of distributed storage (DS) to reduce the communication
cost of content delivery in wireless networks. Content is stored (cached) in a
number of mobile devices using an erasure correcting code. Users retrieve
content from other devices using device-to-device communication or from the
base station (BS), at the expense of higher communication cost. We address the
repair problem when a device storing data leaves the cell. We introduce a
repair scheduling where repair is performed periodically and derive analytical
expressions for the overall communication cost of content download and data
repair as a function of the repair interval. The derived expressions are then
used to evaluate the communication cost entailed by DS using several erasure
correcting codes. Our results show that DS can reduce the communication cost
with respect to the case where content is downloaded only from the BS, provided
that repairs are performed frequently enough. If devices storing content arrive
to the cell, the communication cost using DS is further reduced and, for large
enough arrival rate, it is always beneficial. Interestingly, we show that MDS
codes, which do not perform well for classical DS, can yield a low overall
communication cost in wireless DS.Comment: After final editing for publication in TCO
