Optimizing Smart Helper Placement for Enhanced Cache Efficiency in F-RANs

Smart helpers (SHs) have been proposed to improve content delivery delays and alleviate high fronthaul loads in fog radio access networks (F-RANs). They offer an alternative to deploying additional enhanced remote radio heads (RRHs), which are often infeasible due to site constraints. The optimal placement of SHs can significantly increase the number of users they serve which leads to enhanced cache efficiency and improved content delivery delay. In this letter, we optimize SH placement within an F-RAN to maximize the cache hit rate and further reduce the content delivery latency. We model the SH cache hit rate as a function of outage probability and user density distribution. We develop a function to estimate user density distribution leveraging the radial basis functions (RBFs) method and optimize SH placement utilizing the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Our numerical results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach in maximizing the SH cache hit rate, thereby improving delivery delays and fronthaul loads of the network.