Modeling and Analysis of a Shared Edge Caching System for Connected Cars and Industrial IoT-Based Applications

Abstract

The next revolution of industrial applications, known as smart industry or Industry 4.0, will rely on Internet of Things (IoT) to automate the monitoring, inspection, and control of industrial equipment and processes. In Industry 4.0, efficient content delivery is one of the fundamental challenges to be addressed. Nowadays, the promising solution for content delivery in smart industrial applications is the use of hierarchical caching systems at the network edge (5G small cells). This approach reduces the delay for content delivery and helps improve the performance of smart industrial applications. However, the caching management is a challenging and complex task, especially in those scenarios of shared storage resources on edge devices to support multiple concurrent applications (e.g., industrial, mobile users, and connected cars applications). In this article, we study the performance of a shared edge caching system for content delivery in smart industry and connected cars applications. To do so, we propose a mathematical framework to model the performance of a hierarchical shared edge caching system. The proposed mathematical framework considers the distinct content catalogs of the different applications (e.g., industrial and connected cars applications) and content request characteristics from industrial IoT devices and vehicles. Numerical results show that the performance of the shared edge caching system is sensitive to vehicular mobility (i.e., vehicular speed).