Coded Caching Research Articles

A Low-Complexity User-Preference-Aware Decentralized Coded Caching Based on User Pairing

A Low-Complexity User-Preference-Aware Decentralized Coded Caching Based on User Pairing

Low-Complexity Multi-Antenna Coded Caching Using Location-Aware Placement Delivery Arrays

Low-Complexity Multi-Antenna Coded Caching Using Location-Aware Placement Delivery Arrays

Resource Allocation for Multi-Antenna Coded Caching Systems With Dynamic User Behavior

Resource Allocation for Multi-Antenna Coded Caching Systems With Dynamic User Behavior

UAV-Assisted Wireless Cooperative Communication and Coded Caching: A Multiagent Two-Timescale DRL Approach

UAV-Assisted Wireless Cooperative Communication and Coded Caching: A Multiagent Two-Timescale DRL Approach

Multi-Antenna Coded Caching for Location-Dependent Content Delivery

Human-computer interaction continuously evolves towards a genuinely immersive experience, submerging users in a three-dimensional (3D) virtual world. A realistic, immersive experience necessitates a highly reliable and agile wireless connection to support immense data transmission. Yet, there are abundant but underutilized memory resources available at the devices which can be harnessed as supplementary assets to reduce the excessive burden on the wireless medium. What is more, the use of Coded Caching (CC) techniques enables the cumulative cache memory of users in the network to be used as an additional communication resource. To this end, a location-dependent multi-antenna CC-based content delivery scheme tailored specifically for wireless extended reality applications is proposed in this paper. First, a novel memory allocation process is developed, enabling an appropriate trade-off between local and global caching gains. In this regard, the local caching gain is maximized when the memory is mostly dedicated to locations with poor connectivity conditions (absolute fairness). In contrast, the global caching gain is maximized when the memory is uniformly allocated among all the locations. As a result of the memory allocation process, unequal fractions of location-dependent multimedia content are cached by each user. Given the asymmetric cache placement, a novel algorithm is proposed to create suitable codewords for each user during the subsequent delivery phase, which simultaneously achieves a global and local caching gain. The proposed delivery scheme also combines global caching and spatial multiplexing gains using a weighted max-min multicast beamformer design with multi-rate modulation. Numerical experiments and mathematical analysis demonstrate significant performance gains, in terms of the 95-percentile expected delivery time, compared to unicast and multicast scenarios where either the local or global caching gain is maximized.

Access Points Cooperation Based Secretive Coded Caching in Fog Radio Access Networks

Access Points Cooperation Based Secretive Coded Caching in Fog Radio Access Networks

Extended Placement Delivery Arrays for Multi-Antenna Coded Caching Scheme

Extended Placement Delivery Arrays for Multi-Antenna Coded Caching Scheme

Secretive Coded Caching With Nonuniform Demands in Fog Radio Access Networks

In this letter, we investigate the problem of secretive coded caching in fog radio access networks (F-RANs), aiming at minimizing the average backhaul rate under nonuniform file popularity distribution. Firstly, a two-layer placement scheme which jointly considers secrecy constraints and cache resources in the network is designed. Next, a two-stage delivery scheme which utilizes the network architecture characteristics and exploits the redundancy in user demands is designed. By integrating the above two schemes, a novel secretive coded caching scheme is proposed. Finally, we derive the expression of the average backhaul rate and evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme via simulations. Simulation results show that our proposed scheme outperforms the state of the art in terms of backhaul rate reduction.

Vector Coded Caching Multiplicatively Increases the Throughput of Realistic Downlink Systems

The recent introduction of vector coded caching has revealed that multi-rank transmissions in the presence of receiver-side cache content can dramatically ameliorate the file-size bottleneck of coded caching and substantially boost performance in error-free wire-like channels. In this work, we employ large-matrix analysis to explore the effect of vector coded caching in realistic wireless multi-antenna downlink systems. For a given downlink MISO system already optimized to exploit both multiplexing and beamforming gains, and for a fixed set of antenna and SNR resources, our analysis answers a simple question: What is the multiplicative throughput boost obtained from introducing reasonably-sized receiver-side caches that can pre-store information content? The derived closed-form expressions capture various linear precoders, and a variety of practical considerations such as power dissemination across signals, realistic SNR values, as well as feedback costs. The schemes are very simple (we simply collapse precoding vectors into a single vector), and the recorded gains are notable. For example, for 32 transmit antennas, a received SNR of 20 dB, a coherence bandwidth of 300 kHz, a coherence period of 40 ms, and under realistic file-size and cache-size constraints, vector coded caching is here shown to offer a multiplicative throughput boost of about 310% with ZF/RZF precoding and a 430% boost in the performance of already optimized MF-based (cacheless) systems. Interestingly, vector coded caching also accelerates channel hardening to the benefit of feedback acquisition, often surpassing 540% gains over traditional hardening-constrained cacheless downlink systems.

Enhancing Next-Generation Extended Reality Applications With Coded Caching

Enhancing Next-Generation Extended Reality Applications With Coded Caching

D2D Assisted Multi-Antenna Coded Caching

A device-to-device (D2D) aided multi-antenna coded caching scheme is proposed to improve the average delivery rate and reduce the downlink (DL) beamforming complexity. Novel beamforming and resource allocation schemes are proposed where local data exchange among nearby users is exploited. The transmission is split into two phases: local D2D content exchange and DL transmission. In the D2D phase, subsets of users are selected to share content with the adjacent users directly. In this regard, a low complexity D2D mode selection algorithm is proposed to find the appropriate set of users for the D2D phase with comparable performance to the optimal exhaustive search. During the DL phase, the base station multicasts the remaining data requested by all the users. We identify scenarios and conditions where D2D transmission can reduce the delivery time. Furthermore, we demonstrate how adding the new D2D phase to the DL-only scenario can significantly reduce the beamformer design complexity in the DL phase. The results further highlight that by partly delivering requested data in the D2D phase, the transmission rate can be boosted due to more efficient use of resources during the subsequent DL phase. As a result, the overall content delivery performance is greatly enhanced, especially in the finite signal-to-noise (SNR) regime.

Multi-Antenna Coded Caching From a Placement Delivery Array for Shared Caches

The coded caching problem with shared caches where the server is equipped with multiple transmit antennas is considered. In a shared cache network, several users share a cache, but each user can access only a single cache. The fundamental limits of coded caching are known for the above setting under centralized uncoded placement. In the centralized case, to achieve the gains offered by coded caching, one requires a sub-packetization level which increases exponentially with the number of caches. The dedicated cache networks too had a similar issue, and placement delivery arrays (PDAs) were introduced as a solution to address the sub-packetization bottleneck of coded caching in the dedicated cache network. Our objective is to design coded caching schemes for shared caches with lower sub-packetization requirements than the existing schemes. By leveraging the PDA constructions, we propose a procedure to obtain new coded caching schemes for shared caches with reduced sub-packetization levels than the known schemes in both single and multi-antenna settings. The advantage of the proposed procedure is that all the existing PDA constructions can be transformed into coded caching schemes for shared caches, thereby reducing the sub-packetization level requirement. In addition, the proposed procedure also recovers the optimal caching schemes given by Parinello <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> by using a PDA corresponding to the Maddah-Ali Niesen scheme.

Resolving the Feedback Bottleneck of Multi-Antenna Coded Caching

Multi-antenna cache-aided wireless networks were thought to suffer from a severe feedback bottleneck, since achieving the maximal Degrees-of-Freedom (DoF) performance required feedback from all served users for the known transmission schemes. These feedback costs match the caching gains and thus scale with the number of users. In the context of the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -antenna Multiple-Input Single Output broadcast channel with <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K$ </tex-math></inline-formula> receivers, each having normalized cache size <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\gamma $ </tex-math></inline-formula> , we pair a fundamentally novel algorithm together with a new information-theoretic converse and identify the optimal tradeoff between feedback costs and DoF performance, by showing that having channel state information from only <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C&lt; L$ </tex-math></inline-formula> served users implies an optimal one-shot linear DoF of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C+K\gamma $ </tex-math></inline-formula> . As a side consequence of this, we also now understand that the well known DoF performance <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L+K\gamma $ </tex-math></inline-formula> is in fact exactly optimal. In practice, the above means that we are able to disentangle caching gains from feedback costs, thus achieving unbounded caching gains at the mere feedback cost of the multiplexing gain. This further solidifies the role of caching in boosting multi-antenna systems; caching now can provide unbounded DoF gains over multi-antenna downlink systems, at no additional feedback costs. The above results are extended to also include the corresponding multiple transmitter scenario with caches at both ends.

Coding Overhead Analysis of Decentralized Coded Caching

Coding Overhead Analysis of Decentralized Coded Caching

Rate Splitting With Wireless Edge Caching: A System-Level-Based Co-Design

Rate splitting (RS) and wireless edge caching are essential means for meeting the quality of service requirements of future wireless networks. In this work, we focus on the cross-layer co-design of wireless edge caching schemes with sophisticated physical layer techniques, which facilitate non-orthogonal multiple access and interference mitigation. A flexible caching-aided RS (CRS) technique is proposed that operates in various modes that specify the cache placement at the receivers. We consider two caching policies: the intelligent coded caching (CC), as well as the well-known most popular content (MPC) policy. Both caching policies are integrated within the design parameters of RS in order to serve multiple cache-enabled receivers. The proposed technique is investigated from a system level perspective by taking into account spatial randomness. We consider a single cell network consisting of center and edge receivers and provide a comprehensive analytical framework for the evaluation of the proposed technique in terms of achieved rates. Specifically, we derive the rate achieved at each receiver under minimum rate constraints while incorporating the cache placement characteristics. Numerical results are presented which highlight the flexibility of the proposed technique and show how caching can be exploited in order to further boost the performance of RS.

A Framework of Constructing Placement Delivery Arrays for Centralized Coded Caching

In caching system, it is desirable to design a coded caching scheme with the transmission load <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$R$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and subpacketization <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$F$ </tex-math></inline-formula> as small as possible, in order to improve efficiency of transmission in the peak traffic times and to decrease implementation complexity. Yan et al. reformulated the centralized coded caching scheme as designing a corresponding <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$F\times K$ </tex-math></inline-formula> array called placement delivery array (PDA), where <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$F$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the subpacketization and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the number of users. Motivated by several constructions of PDAs, we introduce a framework for constructing PDAs, where each row is indexed by a row vector of some matrix called row index matrix and each column’s index is labelled by an element of a direct product set. Using this framework, a new scheme is obtained, which can be regarded as a generalization of some previously known schemes. When <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is equal to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\binom{m}{ t}}q^{t}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> for positive integers <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$t$ </tex-math></inline-formula> with <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$t &lt; m$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$q\geq 2$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , we show that the row index matrix must be an orthogonal array if all the users have the same memory size. Furthermore, the row index matrix must be a covering array if the coded gain is <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\binom{m}{ t}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , which is the maximal coded gain under our framework. Consequently the lower bounds on the transmission load and subpacketization of the schemes are derived under our framework. Finally, using orthogonal arrays as the row index matrix, we obtain two more explicit classes of schemes which have significantly advantages on the subpacketization while the transmission load is equal or close to that of the schemes constructed by Shangguan et al. for the same number of users and memory size.

Secretive Coded Caching With Shared Caches

We consider the problem of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">secretive coded caching</i> in a shared cache setup where the number of users accessing a particular <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">helper cache</i> is more than one, and every user can access exactly one helper cache. In secretive coded caching, the constraint of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">perfect secrecy</i> must be satisfied. It requires that the users should not gain, either from their caches or from the transmissions, any information about the content of the files that they did not request from the server. In order to accommodate the secrecy constraint, our problem setup requires, in addition to a helper cache, a dedicated <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">user cache</i> of minimum capacity of 1 unit to every user. This is where our formulation differs from the original work on shared caches (“Fundamental Limits of Coded Caching With Multiple Antennas, Shared Caches and Uncoded Prefetching” by E. Parrinello, A. Ünsal and P. Elia in Trans. Inf. Theory, 2020). In this work, we propose a secretively achievable coded caching scheme with shared caches under centralized placement. When our scheme is applied to the dedicated cache setting, it matches the scheme by Ravindrakumar <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> (“Private Coded Caching”, in Trans. Inf. Forensics and Security, 2018).

Subexponential and Linear Subpacketization Coded Caching via Projective Geometry

Large gains in the rate of cache-aided broadcast communication are obtained using coded caching, but to obtain this most existing centralized coded caching schemes require that the files at the server be divisible into a large number of parts (this number is called subpacketization). In fact, most schemes require the subpacketization to be growing asymptotically as exponential in $\sqrt[\leftroot{-1}\uproot{1}r]{K}$ for some positive integer $r$ and $K$ being the number of users. On the other extreme, few schemes having subpacketization linear in $K$ are known; however, they require large number of users to exist, or they offer only little gain in the rate. In this work, we propose two new centralized coded caching schemes with low subpacketization and moderate rate gains utilizing projective geometries over finite fields. Both the schemes achieve the same asymptotic subpacketization, which is exponential in $O((\log K)^2)$ (thus improving on the $\sqrt[\leftroot{-1}\uproot{1}r]{K}$ exponent). The first scheme has a larger cache requirement but has at most a constant rate (with increasing $K$), while the second has small cache requirement but has a larger rate. As a special case of our second scheme, we get a new linear subpacketization scheme, which has a more flexible range of parameters than the existing linear subpacketization schemes. Extending our techniques, we also obtain low subpacketization schemes for other multi-receiver settings such as distributed computing and the cache-aided interference channel. We validate the performance of all our schemes via extensive numerical comparisons. For a special class of symmetric caching schemes with a given subpacketization level, we propose two new information theoretic lower bounds on the optimal rate of coded caching.

Coded Caching Schemes With Linear Subpacketizations

In coded caching system we prefer to design a coded caching scheme with low subpacketization and small transmission rate (i.e., the low implementation complexity and the efficient transmission during the peak traffic times). Placement delivery arrays (PDA) can be used to design code caching schemes. In this article we propose a framework of constructing PDAs via Hamming distance. As an application, two classes of coded caching schemes with linear subpacketizations and small transmission rates are obtained.

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Cooperative Coded Caching via Homotopy Optimization

Introducing cooperative coded caching into small cell networks is a promising approach to reducing traffic loads. By encoding content via maximum distance separable (MDS) codes, coded fragments can be collectively cached at small-cell base stations (SBSs) to enhance caching efficiency. However, content popularity is usually time-varying and unknown in practice. As a result, cached content is anticipated to be intelligently updated by taking into account limited caching storage and interactive impacts among SBSs. In response to these challenges, we propose a multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework to intelligently update cached content in dynamic environments. With the goal of minimizing long-term expected fronthaul traffic loads, we first model dynamic coded caching as a cooperative multi-agent Markov decision process. Owing to the use of MDS coding, the resulting decision-making falls into a class of constrained reinforcement learning problems with continuous decision variables. To deal with this difficulty, we custom-build a novel DRL algorithm by embedding homotopy optimization into a deep deterministic policy gradient formalism. Next, to empower the caching framework with an effective trade-off between complexity and performance, we propose centralized, and partially and fully decentralized caching controls by applying the derived DRL approach. Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed multi-agent framework.