Lifting Constructions of PDAs for Coded Caching With Linear Subpacketization

Abstract

Coded caching is a technique where multicasting and coding opportunities are utilized to achieve better rate-memory tradeoff in cached networks. A crucial parameter in coded caching is subpacketization, which is the number of parts a file is to be split into for coding purposes. The Maddah-Ali-Niesen scheme has order-optimal rate, but the subpacketization is exponential in the number of users for certain memory regimes. In contrast, coded caching schemes designed using placement delivery arrays (PDAs) can have linear subpacketization with a penalty in rate. In this work, we propose several constructions of efficient PDAs through lifting, where a base PDA is expanded by replacing each entry by another PDA. By proposing and using the notion of Blackburn-compatibility of PDAs, we provide multiple lifting constructions with increasing coding gains. We compare the constructed coded caching schemes with other existing schemes for moderately high number of users and show that the proposed constructions are versatile and achieve a good rate-memory tradeoff at low subpacketizations.