Information-centric Wireless Networks Research Articles

Scalable Video Caching for Information Centric Wireless Networks

Recently, information centric wireless network (ICWN) has been concerned due to its flexible network structure and high efficiency of content delivery. Meanwhile, scalable video coding (SVC) is a promising solution to provide high quality of video services. Combining ICWN and SVC is expected to improve the performance of wireless video delivery services. Since caching strategy plays a significant role in ICWN, in this paper, we address the caching problem for scalable videos over ICWN in mobile scenarios. By jointly considering the layered structure of SVC and the hierarchical architecture of ICWN, we formulate an optimization problem to minimize the average download delay. A novel layered hierarchical caching method is proposed for solving the problem. Furthermore, we focus on a special but common case in which the above delay minimization problem is equivalently transformed into a cache hit ratio maximization problem. A simplified algorithm with 1/2 approximation ratio is provided. Finally, simulation results show that our proposed caching schemes outperform baseline methods in cache hit rate and delay performance.

Resource Allocation in Information-Centric Wireless Networking With D2D-Enabled MEC: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

Recently, information-centric wireless networks (ICWNs) have become a promising Internet architecture of the next generation, which allows network nodes to have computing and caching capabilities and adapt to the growing mobile data traffic in 5G high-speed communication networks. However, the design of ICWN is still faced with various challenges with respect to capacity and traffic. Therefore, mobile edge computing (MEC) and device-to-device (D2D) communications can be employed to aid offloading the core networks. This paper investigates the optimal policy for resource allocation in ICWNs by maximizing the spectrum efficiency and system capacity of the overall network. Due to unknown and stochastic properties of the wireless channel environment, this problem was modeled as a Markov decision process. In continuous-valued state and action variables, the policy gradient approach was employed to learn the optimal policy through interactions with the environment. We first recognized the communication mode according to the location of the cached content, considering whether it is D2D mode or cellular mode. Then, we adopt the Gaussian distribution as the parameterization strategy to generate continuous stochastic actions to select power. In addition, we use softmax to output channel selection to maximize system capacity and spectrum efficiency while avoiding interference to cellular users. The numerical experiments show that our learning method performs well in a D2D-enabled MEC system.

Asymptotic Analysis of Inhomogeneous Information-Centric Wireless Networks With Infrastructure Support

The information-centric networking (ICN) is a promising and significant approach towards the host-to-content interaction. Motivated by the fact that nodes are inhomogeneously distributed to a certain extent in wireless networks, e.g., the distribution of vehicles exhibits cluster phenomenon in some bustling places of urban areas, we study the impacts of inhomogeneous node distribution and local node cooperation on information-centric wireless networks with infrastructure support. The distribution of nodes is assumed to be inhomogeneous as a multiclustering topology. The base stations are assumed to have access to all the contents, which are requested following a popularity distribution. We propose a scheme where each node retrieves the requested content from other nodes or base stations. Based on the number of clusters and that of base stations, we divide the network topology into two cases, i.e., the cluster-dense case and cluster-sparse case, and evaluate the corresponding throughput and delay performance. Finally, under the Zipf's law for content popularity distribution, we investigate the optimal caching problem in the two cases, and obtain the optimized throughput and delay performance.

Information-Centric Wireless Networks with Virtualization and D2D Communications

Wireless network virtualization and ICN are two promising technologies for next generation wireless networks. Although some excellent works have focused on these two technologies, D2D communications have not been investigated in information-centric virtualized cellular networks. Meanwhile, content caching in mobile devices has attracted much attention due to the saved backhaul consumption or reduced transmission latency in D2D-assisted cellular networks. However, when it comes to the multi-operator scenario, direct content sharing between different operators via D2D communications is typically infeasible. In this article, we propose a novel information-centric virtualized cellular network framework with D2D communications, enabling not only content caching in the air, but also inter-operator content sharing between mobile devices. We describe the key components in the proposed framework, and present the interactions among them. We incorporate and formulate the content caching strategies in resource allocation optimization, to maximize the total utility of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) by caching popular content in mobile devices. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework and scheme with different system parameters.

Virtual Resource Allocation in Software-Defined Information-Centric Cellular Networks With Device-to-Device Communications and Imperfect CSI

In this paper, we propose an architecture of software-defined information-centric network virtualization with device-to-device (D2D) communications, which facilitates dynamic virtual resource allocation and content caching via a software-defined networking (SDN) controller with a global view of the system. In our proposed framework, substrate physical resources can be virtualized and shared among multiple mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). Meanwhile, by means of integrating D2D communications into information-centric wireless networks, content caching is enabled not only in the air but in mobile devices as well. In addition, taking into consideration inaccurate channel estimation and measurement, we formulate the virtual resource allocation and caching optimization as a discrete stochastic optimization problem in which imperfect channel state information is incorporated. Because the formulated virtual resource allocation problem is a large-scale combinational optimization problem, we exploit discrete stochastic approximation approaches to cope with it. Finally, extensive simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme with different system parameters. Simulation results show that MVNOs can benefit from not only the sharing of physical infrastructure but from the caching functionality that exists in both the air and mobile devices as well.

Virtual Resource Allocation in Information-Centric Wireless Networks With Virtualization

Wireless network virtualization and information-centric networking (ICN) are two promising technologies in next-generation wireless networks. Traditionally, these two technologies have been addressed separately. In this paper, we show that jointly considering wireless network virtualization and ICN is necessary. Specifically, we propose an information-centric wireless network virtualization framework for enabling wireless network virtualization and ICN. Then, we formulate the virtual resource allocation and in-network caching strategy as an optimization problem, considering not only the revenue earned by serving the end users but the cost-of-leasing infrastructure as well. In addition, with recent advances in distributed convex optimization, we develop an efficient alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM)-based distributed virtual resource allocation and in-network caching scheme. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Information-Centric Virtualized Cellular Networks With Device-to-Device Communications

Information-centric wireless network virtualization enables the sharing of not only the infrastructure but also the content among different service providers, enabling the gain of not only virtualization but in-network caching as well. In this paper, we propose a novel framework with information-centric wireless virtualization and device-to-device (D2D) communications, which enables content caching not only in the air but in the mobile device as well. Moreover, the content is virtualized and can be shared by users from different virtual service providers. In this framework, we formulate the virtual resource allocation and caching strategies as a joint optimization problem, considering the gain of not only virtualization but of caching in the proposed information-centric wireless network virtualization architecture with D2D communications as well. In addition, to reduce computational complexity and signaling overhead, we propose a distributed algorithm to solve the formulated problem based on recent advances in alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), in which different parties only need to solve their own problems without the exchange of channel state information (CSI) with fast convergence rate. Extensive simulations are conducted with different system parameters to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Information-centric network function virtualization over 5g mobile wireless networks

Wireless network virtualization and information-centric networking (ICN) are two promising techniques in software-defined 5G mobile wireless networks. Traditionally, these two technologies have been addressed separately. In this paper we show that integrating wireless network virtualization with ICN techniques can significantly improve the end-to-end network performance. In particular, we propose an information- centric wireless network virtualization architecture for integrating wireless network virtualization with ICN. We develop the key components of this architecture: radio spectrum resource, wireless network infrastructure, virtual resources (including content-level slicing, network-level slicing, and flow-level slicing), and informationcentric wireless virtualization controller. Then we formulate the virtual resource allocation and in-network caching strategy as an optimization problem, considering the gain of not only virtualization but also in-network caching in our proposed information-centric wireless network virtualization architecture. The obtained simulation results show that our proposed information-centric wireless network virtualization architecture and the related schemes significantly outperform the other existing schemes.