Content Caching and Delivery in MIMO Fog-RANs With Wireless Fronthaul at Small Cache Size

Abstract

This letter investigates the caching and delivery strategies in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) fog radio access network (Fog-RAN). We focus on the small cache size scenario where the accumulated cache memories of all edge nodes (ENs) are not enough to cache the whole database. We propose a new file splitting and placement scheme tailored for the small cache size, which offers the freedom to adjust the duplication order of the cached contents to minimize the normalized delivery time (NDT). In the fronthaul delivery, we use multiple antennas to multiplex multiple messages while in the access delivery, transmitter cooperation induced by the duplicated contents among ENs is utilized to cancel interference. By jointly optimizing caching and delivery, we obtain an achievable minimum NDT. It is shown that the achievable NDT is within an additive gap of 1 to the theoretical optimum.