Degrees of freedom in cached MIMO relay networks with multiple base stations

The ability of physical layer relay caching to increase the degrees of freedom (DoF) of a single cell was recently illustrated. In this paper, we extend this result to the case of multiple cells in which a caching relay is shared among multiple non-cooperative base stations (BSs). In particular, we show that a large DoF gain can be achieved by exploiting the benefits of having a shared relay that cooperates with the BSs. We first propose a cache-assisted relaying protocol that improves the cooperation opportunity between the BSs and the relay. Next, we consider the cache content placement problem that aims to design the cache content at the relay such that the DoF gain is maximized. We propose an optimal algorithm and a near-optimal low-complexity algorithm for the cache content placement problem. Simulation results show significant improvement in the DoF gain using the proposed relay-caching protocol.