Competitive Caching of Contents in 5G Edge Cloud Networks

摘要

The surge of mobile data traffic forces network operators to cope withcapacity shortage. The deployment of small cells in 5G networks is meant toreduce latency, backhaul traffic and increase radio access capacity. In thiscontext, mobile edge computing technology will be used to manage dedicatedcache space in the radio access network. Thus, mobile network operators will beable to provision OTT content providers with new caching services to enhancethe quality of experience of their customers on the move. In turn, the cachememory in the mobile edge network will become a shared resource. Hence, westudy a competitive caching scheme where contents are stored at given price setby the mobile network operator. We first formulate a resource allocationproblem for a tagged content provider seeking to minimize the expected missedcache rate. The optimal caching policy is derived accounting for popularity andavailability of contents, the spatial distribution of small cells, and thecaching strategies of competing content providers. It is showed to induce aspecific order on contents to be cached based on their popularity andavailability. Next, we study a game among content providers in the form of ageneralized Kelly mechanism with bounded strategy sets and heterogeneousplayers. Existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium are proved. Finally,extensive numerical results validate and characterize the performance of themodel.