Consolidated caching with cache splitting and trans-rating in mobile edge computing networks

The contribution of video content in mobile data traffic is predicted to increase over the coming years. If the network is not managed efficiently, this huge amount of data will increase the congestion in the cellular network. Caching at the edge of the cellular network is one of the prominent solutions to mitigate this issue. By deploying Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) at eNodeB (eNB), distributed edge caching can be realized in the cellular network. In this work, we propose a consolidated caching scheme with cache splitting and trans-rating in MEC network. Cache consolidation uses the collaborative capability of MEC servers to avoid replication of videos in the MEC cache network thus increasing the caching capacity. Without replication, access delay may increase. To maintain low access delay, we split the cache storage into two logical parts; full video cache, and initial video cache. Full video cache stores the complete videos without any replication in the MEC cache network and initial video cache stores only initial segments of the videos. Initial segments of the videos are replicated in the cache network to reduce the access delay. Extensive simulations results show improvement in initial access delay, cache hit ratio, and external traffic load compared to the existing solutions.