Content-centric Edge Caching for 5G Mobile Internet and Beyond

Abstract

Mobile data traffic is increasing explosively in recent years due to tremendous growth in demands from mobile users for multimedia contents. However, current mobile networking technologies, including network architectures and data transmission techniques, cannot support the anticipated traffic load without degrading mobile user's quality of service (QoS) or quality of experience (QoE). Much ongoing research efforts are targeted at developing technologies for fifth generation (5G) mobile Internets and beyond to overcome these limitations. Content-centric edge caching has recently emerged as a promising technique to satisfy the demands of popular multimedia contents that are requested repeatedly by multiple mobile users over a period of time. This talk will motivate and explore the design principles and goals of content-centric edge caching. We shall present a generalized architectural framework as a basis of differentiating different edge caching designs. We shall present three trace-driven case studies involving a single tier cellular network, a multi-tier heterogeneous cellular network, and a two-tier caching scheme involving a cellular network and device-to-device communications, to illustrate the optimization of some design alternatives. We shall conclude the talk with a discussion of research opportunities and challenges in content-centric edge caching.