Cluster Caching Strategy Based on User Characteristics in Edge Networks

To meet the growing traffic demand and relieve the pressure on the core network, edge caching and device-to-device (D2D) communication are used in next generation mobile networks. In this paper, based on a three-way collaboration between user devices (UEs), base stations (BSs) and cloud data center, caching the content most likely to be requested can facilitate direct content delivery without the need to fetch content from remote cloud data center in the mobile edge networks. This reduces the average retrieval latency of content, reduces the backhaul burden and minimises duplicate content delivery. Specifically, we first use a spectral clustering algorithm to cluster users based on their social and physical attributes, and then associate each cluster with a different base station in order to efficiently cache popular contents. Finally, we propose a new caching policy based on content cache value and user activity to take full account of the metrics that influence caching decisions. Experimental results show that our proposed policy can effectively reduce content access latency.