Project Details
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Caching in Future Mobile Networks: Utilize Memory to Overcome Spectrum Shortage

Subject Area Electronic Semiconductors, Components and Circuits, Integrated Systems, Sensor Technology, Theoretical Electrical Engineering
Term from 2017 to 2023
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 388145982
 
Final Report Year 2023

Final Report Abstract

In future wireless networks, the higher data rate requirements by the users call for dense mobile infrastructure. In particular, more base stations are required to fulfill the demands of the users. This in turn put more constraints on the base stations to decide how to optimally assign available resources. Cloud and Fog Radio Access Networks (C-FRAN) are proposed as a new model to strengthen the limited computational complexity of the base stations. Since the central servers or clouds not only contain the data base of all the files, they also have more computational resources and can assist the base stations to fulfill the other desired tasks. Within this context, the project aimed at two important aspects, namely • how the necessary computation based on sensitive data can be distributed among those servers while ensuring privacy and • how to minimize the latency in providing the data from the clouds to the users. In particular, due to the broadcast nature of the wireless medium, the communication link between the base stations and the cloud, referred to as backhaul/fronthaul link, is limited by certain rate and latency constraints. The methods to investigate and diminish the issue of limited backhaul rate constraint in the project were two-fold. First, utilizing the leverage offered by caching, i.e., storing popular files (video e.g.) in mobile users’ local caches and/or edge nodes (e.g, base stations (BS) or relays) disseminated in the network coverage area: The local availability of requested user content in the caches, also referred to as cache hits, results in reduced backhaul traffic and low file delivery time. Second, the design of schemes to tradeoff between utilizing the backhaul/fronthaul links and the necessary distributed computation at the cloud servers. In the project, we have studied the fundamental information-theoretic limits in terms of lower and upper bounds on the delivery time. Cases in which simple zeroforcing (ZF) and more involved interference alignment (IA) schemes were needed were identified based on the bounds. Further, the designed schemes offered the opportunity to cast the research problem as optimization problems, which enabled uplink and downlink rate-efficient, straggler-robust and secure distributed computations.

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