Efficient caching strategy in wireless networks with mobile edge computing

Abstract

With the increasing popularity of Internet of things (IoT) applications, mobile edge computing (MEC) is emerging as a new technology. Caching popular content to edge servers can effectively reduce backhaul time and satisfy a large number of users’ access requests for the content. However, edge caching faces the problems of limited storage capacity in the edge server and limited service scope in MEC. Therefore, edge caching should consider allocating the limited caching resources reasonably to different content providers (CP) to obtain the high caching utility. In this paper, we study caching in a multi-CP scenario with multiple users. In the process of defining content popularity, we consider that CPs′ overall popularity degree satisfies the law of diminishing marginal effect, and define the user satisfaction function as the benefit of caching. Then, aiming at maximizing caching utility, we establish a game model of caching resource competition among CPs based on noncooperative game, and prove the existence of Nash equilibrium (NE). In addition, the Best Response based Multi-CP Caching (BRMC) algorithm is proposed to obtain the best caching strategy. Finally, iterative experiments validate the convergence of the BRMC, and comparative experiments show that the BRMC can achieve a high caching utility.