Network-aware cache provisioning and request routing in heterogeneous cellular networks

In past years there has been an increase in the number of mobile devices and data traffic triggered by the popularisation of multimedia applications. In parallel, new applications and services with restricted requirements of delay and throughput have been developed. The 5G architecture is an enabler for such evolution, however, some fundamental management tasks deserve deep research, especially the cache placement. There are still challenges concerning the design of caching policies, such as limited storage space, content popularity, users requirements, and network congestion. In this context, we propose, implement, and evaluate a model of network-aware cooperative cache policy to decrease the latency experienced by heterogeneous cellular network (HCN) end-users. The model was formulated through integer linear programming (ILP) and performs both cache placement and request routing tasks. To compose a baseline for comparisons, we improved state-of-the-art policies by adding network-based attributes. Later, numerical simulations showed that the policy successfully chose paths decreasing the network latency and overcoming the counterparts.