Adaptive Partitioning and Placement for Two-Layer Collaborative Caching in Mobile Edge Computing Networks

With the explosive growth in demands for mobile video services, the focus of cellular networks is evolving from the core network to the edge network to facilitate resource-intensive services and mitigate backhaul burdens. However, the overlapping in coverage and the user similarity in preferences lead to substantial cache redundancy. In addition, the mobility of users poses a significant challenge to smart devices for device-to-device (D2D) communications, which affects the content richness and hit ratio of the edge cache. In this paper, an adaptive cache partitioning and placement (ACPP) strategy is proposed for mobile edge computing (MEC) networks to minimize the average cost of content access. A practical two-layer collaborative caching model is presented, which comprises 5G base station (gNB) clusters and D2D caching. Besides, a public and private cache partitioning method is designed for gNBs to improve the content richness of local cache, and a static and dynamic cache partitioning method is developed for user devices to address the varying mobility patterns. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed ACPP strategy in delivering content at a lower average cost, and achieve a better hit ratio with a relatively high energy consumption at user ends.