Decentralized Caching Schemes and Performance Limits in Two-layer Networks

We study the decentralized caching scheme in a two-layer network, which includes a sever, multiple helpers, and multiple users. Basically, the proposed caching scheme consists of two phases, i.e, placement phase and delivery phase. In the placement phase, each helper/user randomly and independently selects contents from the server and stores them into its memory. In the delivery phase, the users request contents from the server, and the server satisfies each user through a helper. Different from the existing caching scheme, the proposed caching scheme takes into account the pre-stored contents at both helpers and users in the placement phase to design the delivery phase. Meanwhile, the proposed caching scheme exploits index coding in the delivery phase and leverages multicast opportunities, even when different users request distinct contents. Besides, we analytically characterize the performance limit of the proposed caching scheme, and show that the achievable rate region of the proposed caching scheme lies within constant margins to the information-theoretic optimum. In particular, the multiplicative and additive factors are carefully sharpened to be $\frac{1}{48}$ and $4$ respectively, both of which are better than the state of arts. Finally, simulation results demonstrate the advantage of the proposed caching scheme compared with the state of arts.