Content-Centric Heterogeneous Fog Networks Relying on Energy Efficiency Optimization

Next-generation wireless communications are expected to provide reliable high-rate connectivity. The recent concept of fog-enabled architecture comes to rescue by invoking a substantial amount of data storage close to end-user devices for meeting these challenges. Thus, caching popular contents at heterogeneous devices, e.g., fog nodes (FNs) or fog access points (FAPs), constitutes a promising technique of reducing both the traffic and the energy consumption of the backhaul links. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an energy-efficient caching and node association algorithm for cache-aided fog networks. First, we solve the problem of energy-efficient content caching and delivery in the FNs/FAPs in conjunction with a fixed node association strategy, where the FNs communicate either with other FNs by node-to-node (N2N) communications or with the FAPs in their proximity. In both caching scenarios, we investigate the relationship between the caching probability of the file and the energy-efficient content delivery by formulating the associated energy efficiency (EE) optimization problem under caching memory constraints. Then, we derive a joint modulation mode allocation strategy and caching policy for each content caching node and conceive a joint node association and caching algorithm for maximizing the EE. Finally, we quantify both the overall EE and throughput for demonstrating that the proposed caching and transmission strategy achieves significant performance improvements.