Dynamic hierarchical collaborative caching scheme in ultra-dense networks

Pushing popular contents to the edge of the network can meet the growing demand for data traffic, reduce latency and relieve the pressure of the backhaul. However, considering the limited storage space of the base stations, it is impossible to cache all the contents, especially in ultra-dense network(UDN). Furthermore, the uneven distribution of mobile users results in load imbalance among small base stations(SBSs) in both time and space, which also affects the caching strategy. To overcome these shortcoming, the impact of the changing load imbalance in UDN was investigated, and then a dynamic hierarchical collaborative caching(DHCC) scheme was proposed to optimize latency and caching hit rate. The storage of the SBS is logically divided into the independent caching layer and the collaborative caching layer. The independent caching layer caches the most popular contents for local users’ interest, and the collaborative caching layer caches contents as much as possible for the benefit of content diversity in the region. Different SBSs have respective storage space layer division ratios, according to their real-time traffic load. For SBSs with heavy load, the independent caching layers are allocated with more space. Otherwise, the collaborative caching layers could store more contents with larger space. The simulation results show that, DHCC improved both transmission latency and hit rate compared with existing caching schemes.