Multi-tier cooperative caching in fog radio access network

Aiming at the problem of reducing the load of the backward link in the edge buffer and fog wireless access network technology,a multi-tier cooperative caching scheme in F-RAN was proposed to further reduce the backhaul traffic load.In particular,by considering the network topology,content popularity prediction and link capacity,the optimization problem was decomposed into knapsack subproblems in multi-tiers,and effective greedy algorithms were proposed to solve the corresponding subproblems.Simulation results show that the proposed multi-tier cooperative caching scheme can effectively reduce the backhaul traffic and achieve relatively high cache hit rate.     

Supporting cooperative caching in ad hoc networks

Most researches in ad hoc networks focus on routing and not much work has been done on data access. A common technique used to improve the performance of data access is caching. Cooperative caching, which allows the sharing and coordination of cached data among multiple nodes, can further explore the potential of the caching techniques. Due to mobility and resource constraints of ad hoc networks, cooperative caching techniques designed for wired networks may not be applicable to ad hoc networks. In this paper, we design and evaluate cooperative caching techniques to efficiently support data access in ad hoc networks. We first propose two schemes: CacheData, which caches the data, and CachePath, which caches the data path. After analyzing the performance of those two schemes, we propose a hybrid approach (HybridCache), which can further improve the performance by taking advantage of CacheData and CachePath while avoiding their weaknesses. Cache replacement policies are also studied to further improve the performance. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes can significantly reduce the query delay and message complexity when compared to other caching schemes.     

Improving protocol robustness in ad hoc networks through cooperative packet caching and shortest multipath routing

A mobile ad hoc network is an autonomous system of infrastructure-less, multihop, wireless mobile nodes. Reactive routing protocols perform well in this environment due to their ability to cope quickly against topological changes. This paper proposes a new routing protocol named CHAMP (caching and multiple path) routing protocol. CHAMP uses cooperative packet caching and shortest multipath routing to reduce packet loss due to frequent route failures. We show through extensive simulation results that these two techniques yield significant improvement in terms of packet delivery, end-to-end delay and routing overhead. We also show that existing protocol optimizations employed to reduce packet loss due to frequent route failures, namely local repair in AODV and packet salvaging in DSR, are not effective at high mobility rates and high network traffic.     

Edge-first-based cooperative caching strategy in information centric networking

In order to optimize the replica placement in information centric networking,an edge-first-based cooperative caching strategy (ECCS) was proposed.According to the strategy,cache decision was made during the interest forwarding stage.The decision result and statistic information would been forwarded to upstream routers step by step.Utilizing the information,upstream nodes could update their cache information table immediately to achieve cooperative caching.The experimental results indicate ECCS can achieve salient performance gain in terms of server load reduction ratio,average hop reduction ratio,average cache hit ratio,compared with current strategies.     

Design issues and performance analysis for DSR routing with reclaim‐based caching in MANETs

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have been positioned as one of the most important emerging wireless communication scenarios. Temporally formed by a collection of wireless mobile hosts, a MANET does not require the aid of any centralized administration. From this stems a suite of challenges in achieving an efficient MANET routing and content delivery in order to make the best use of precious resources and reduce the routing overhead at each MANET host. One of the reported approaches for solving the issue is the use of caching, which is expected to minimize the routing overhead by taking advantage of the limited memory at each mobile host. This paper introduces a novel scheme for addressing the above issue, called Reclaim‐Based Caching (RBC) policy, which dynamically utilizes a cache replacement mechanism of reclaiming stale routes to efficiently verify and validate a recoverable caching mechanism in Dynamic Source Routing. The main design purposes of RBC are to reduce the routing control overhead, lower the end‐to‐end routing delay, enhance the packet delivery ratio, and obtain a higher throughput for improving routing performance and accelerating the Route Discovery process due to low temporary link failure and high cache utilization. Hence, we can gather all feasible and historical route information into the cache library to be reclaimed as a threshold of efficient routing control. Consequently, the proposed RBC of this paper can be used in the universal wireless network environment to achieve better routing performance and to provide a more flexible real‐time application. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

GroCoca: group-based peer-to-peer cooperative caching in mobile environment

In a mobile cooperative caching environment, we observe the need for cooperating peers to cache useful data items together, so as to improve cache hit from peers. This could be achieved by capturing the data requirement of individual peers in conjunction with their mobility pattern, for which we realized via a GROup-based COoperative CAching scheme (GroCoca). In GroCoca, we define a tightly-coupled group (TCG) as a collection of peers that possess similar mobility pattern and display similar data affinity. A family of algorithms is proposed to discover and maintain all TCGs dynamically. Furthermore, two cooperative cache management protocols, namely, cooperative cache admission control and replacement, are designed to control data replicas and improve data accessibility in TCGs. A cache signature scheme is also adopted in GroCoca in order to provide information for the mobile clients to determine whether their TCG members are likely caching their desired data items and to perform cooperative cache replacement Experimental results show that GroCoca outperforms the conventional caching scheme and standard COoperative CAching scheme (COCA) in terms of access latency and global cache hit ratio. However, GroCoca generally incurs higher power consumption     

A framework of data caching for improving decoding efficiency of opportunistic network coding

Throughput performance of wireless networks can be enhanced by applying network coding (NC) technique based on opportunistic listening. The packets sent or overheard by a network node should be locally cached for the purpose of possible future decoding. How to manage the cache to reduce the overhead incurred in performing NC and, meanwhile, exploit performance gain is an interesting issue that has not been deeply investigated. In this paper, we present a framework for packet caching policy in multihop wireless networks, aiming at improving decoding efficiency, and thus throughput gain of NC. We formulate the caching policy design as an optimization problem for maximizing decoding utility and derive a set of optimization rules. We propose a distributed network coding caching policy (NCP), which can be readily incorporated into various existing NC architectures to improve NC performance gain. We theoretically analyze the performance improvement of NCP over completely opportunistic NC (COPE). In addition, we use simulation experiments based on ns‐2 to evaluate the performance of NCP. Numerical results validate our analytical model and show that NCP can effectively improve the performance gain of NC compared with COPE. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

In-network caching for energy efficiency in content-centric networking

Recently, Internet energy efficiency is paid more and more attention. New Internet architectures with more energy efficiency were proposed to promote the scalability in energy consumption. The eontent-eentrie networking （CCN） proposed a content-centric paradigm which was proven to have higher energy efficiency. Based on the energy optimization model of CCN with in-network caching, the authors derive expressions to tradeoff the caching energy and the transport energy, and then design a new energy efficiency cache scheme based on virtual round trip time （EV） in CCN. Simulation results show that the EV scheme is better than the least recently used （LRU） and popularity based cache policies on the network average energy consumption, and its average hop is also much better than LRU policy.     

Large-scale cooperative caching and application-level multicast in multimedia content delivery networks

The Internet and multimedia technologies have greatly changed our lives. With the increasing popularity of multimedia entertainment applications over the Internet, innovative infrastructures and technologies are needed to efficiently distribute the surging amount of multimedia contents. Content delivery networks provide an intermediate layer of infrastructure that helps to deliver the contents from content providers to a large community of geographically distributed users. Cooperative caching and application-level multicast are two technologies that can be implemented in a multimedia content delivery network for delivering on-demand and live multimedia contents respectively. This article introduces the ideas and approaches of implementing cooperative caching and application-level multicast under a hierarchical architecture to achieve large-scale multimedia content delivery.     

Design and analysis of cooperative wireless data access algorithms in multi-radio wireless networks

In the future, most mobile nodes will have multiple radio interfaces, and this feature can be exploited to reduce the transmission cost in wireless data access applications. In this work, we propose cooperative poll-each-read (CoopPER) and cooperative callback (CoopCB) wireless data access algorithms with strong consistency in multi-radio wireless networks. In addition, we investigate CoopPER and CoopCB in heterogeneous wireless networks where CoopPER and CoopCB nodes are mixed. Extensive simulations are done to show the effects of access-to-update ratio, data access pattern, cache size, and cooperation range. Simulation results demonstrate that CoopPER and CoopCB can significantly reduce the expensive transmission cost over wireless links.     

Impacts of user-selfishness on cooperative content caching in social wireless networks

Cooperative caching can be an effective mechanism for reducing electronic content provisioning cost in Social Wireless Networks (SWNETs). These networks are formed by a collection of mobile data enabled devices physically gathering in settings such as university campus, malls, airport and other public places. In this paper, we first propose an optimal collaborative object caching policy in order to minimize the object provisioning cost in SWNETs with homogenous user requests and a peer-rebate model for promoting collaboration. Then using an analytical model we study the impacts of user selfishness on the provisioning cost and the earned rebate when certain nodes in an SWNET selfishly deviate from the optimal policy. User selfishness is motivated in order to either increase individually earned rebate or to reduce content provisioning cost. The analytical model is validated by experimental results from simulated SWNETs using the network simulator ns2.     

Improving satellite services with cooperative communications

This paper proposes new transmission schemes for the delivery of satellite services. In the proposed scenarios, mobile terminals are allowed to forward the signal received from the satellite. This scheme provides spatial diversity just like MIMO transmission schemes. Moreover, the coverage area is extended because masked terminals have an additional opportunity to get the service from neighboring terminals. We use the paradigm of cooperative communications to compare the advantages and limitations of several scenarios in hybrid terrestrial/satellite systems. In particular, we study the following basic transmission scheme: in a first time slot, the satellite sends its signal and, in a second time slot, mobile terrestrial terminals are relaying the satellite signal. An analysis framework is proposed and applied to this cooperation scenario at the destination terminal. The framework is modeling the cooperation process and clearly separates the control part from the data user part. The paper outlines the importance of the control part by evaluating the relay selection policy on a basic hybrid satellite/ad hoc system. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving energy efficiency of incremental relay based cooperative communications in wireless body area networks

In this paper, we investigate the energy efficiency of an incremental relay based cooperative communication scheme in wireless body area networks (WBANs). We derive analytical expressions for the energy efficiency of direct and cooperative communication schemes taking into account the effect of packet error rate. The following communication scenarios specific to a WBAN are considered: (i) in‐body communication between an implant sensor node and the gateway, and (ii) on‐body communication between a body surface node and the gateway with line‐of‐sight (LOS) and non‐LOS channels. The results reveal a threshold behavior that separates regions where direct transmission is better from regions where incremental relay cooperation is more useful in terms of energy efficiency. It is observed that, compared with direct communication, incremental relay based cooperative communication schemes improves the energy efficiency significantly. Further, cooperation extends the source‐to‐destination hop length over, which energy efficient communication can be achieved as compared with direct communication. We also observe that, for both direct as well as cooperative transmission schemes in error prone channels, an optimal packet size exists that result in maximum energy efficiency. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fine-grained cooperative access control scheme with hidden policies

The traditional ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) has two problems:one is that the access policy must be embedded in the ciphertext and sent, which leads to the disclosure of user爷 s privacy information, the other is that it does not support collaborative decryption, which cannot meet the actual demand of conditional collaborative decryption among multiple users. In order to deal with the above two problems at the same time, a fine-grained cooperative access control scheme with hidden policies (FCAC-HP) is proposed based on the existing CP-ABE schemes combined with blockchain technology. In FCAC-HP scheme, users are grouped by group identifier so that only users within the same group can cooperate. In the data encryption stage, the access policy is encrypted and then embedded in the ciphertext to protect the privacy information of the access policy. In the data access stage, the anonymous attribute matching technology is introduced so that only matched users can decrypt ciphertext data to improve the efficiency of the system. In this process, a smart contract is used to execute the verification algorithm to ensure the credibility of the results. In terms of security, FCAC-HP scheme is based on the prime subgroup discriminative assumption and is proved to be indistinguishable under chosen plaintext attack (CPA) by dual system encryption technology. Experimental verification and analysis show that FCAC-HP scheme improves computational efficiency while implementing complex functions.     

Mitigating the gateway bottleneck via transparent cooperative caching in wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have been proposed to provide cheap, easily deployable and robust Internet access. The dominant Internet-access traffic from clients causes a congestion bottleneck around the gateway, which can significantly limit the throughput of the WMN clients in accessing the Internet. In this paper, we present MeshCache, a transparent caching system for WMNs that exploits the locality in client Internet-access traffic to mitigate the bottleneck effect at the gateway, thereby improving client-perceived performance. MeshCache leverages the fact that a WMN typically spans a small geographic area and hence mesh routers are easily over-provisioned with CPU, memory, and disk storage, and extends the individual wireless mesh routers in a WMN with built-in content caching functionality. It then performs cooperative caching among the wireless mesh routers.We explore two architecture designs for MeshCache: (1) caching at every client access mesh router upon file download, and (2) caching at each mesh router along the route the Internet-access traffic travels, which requires breaking a single end-to-end transport connection into multiple single-hop transport connections along the route. We also leverage the abundant research results from cooperative web caching in the Internet in designing cache selection protocols for efficiently locating caches containing data objects for these two architectures. We further compare these two MeshCache designs with caching at the gateway router only.Through extensive simulations and evaluations using a prototype implementation on a testbed, we find that MeshCache can significantly improve the performance of client nodes in WMNs. In particular, our experiments with a Squid-based MeshCache implementation deployed on the MAP mesh network testbed with 15 routers show that compared to caching at the gateway only, the MeshCache architecture with hop-by-hop caching reduces the load at the gateway by 38%, improves the average client throughput by 170%, and increases the number of transfers that achieve a throughput greater than 1 Mbps by a factor of 3.     

Proactive caching with content‐based pricing for cooperative femtocells in two‐tier heterogeneous networks

With increase in the number of smart wireless devices, the demand for higher data rates also grows which puts immense pressure to the network. A vast majority of this demand comes from video files, and it is observed that only a few popular video files are requested more frequently during any specified time interval. Recent studies have shown that caching provides a better performance as it minimizes the network load by avoiding the fetching of same files multiple times from the server. In this paper, we propose to combine two ideas; proactive caching of files and content‐based pricing in macro‐femto heterogeneous networks. The femtocell access point (FAP) is allowed to manipulate its users' demand through content‐based pricing and serve the users' requests by proactively downloading suitable content into its cache memory which reduces the load of the femtocell. In addition, an incentive mechanism is also proposed which encourages the FAP to help macrocell users under its coverage zone by allowing access to its cached content and thereby reduces the macrocell load. The proposed content‐based pricing and proactive caching scheme for femtocells is modeled as a Stackelberg game among the macrocell base station and the FAP to jointly maximize both of their utilities. Performance analysis of the scheme is presented for a single femtocell scenario and compared with the conventional flat pricing‐based scheme via numerical examples. The results demonstrate significant reduction in network load using our proposed scheme.     

Improving route discovery in on-demand routing protocols using two-hop connected dominating sets

Many signaling or data forwarding operations involve the broadcasting of packets, which incurs considerable collisions in ad hoc networks based on a contention-based channel access protocol. We propose the Three-hop Horizon Pruning (THP) algorithm to compute two-hop connected dominating set (TCDS) using only local topology information (i.e., two-hop neighborhood). Because every node has the two-hop neighborhood information, it is possible to maintain fresh routes to all nodes within two hops. In this situation, a TCDS is ideal for the propagation of route request (RREQ) messages in the route discovery process of on-demand routing protocols. THP is shown to be more efficient than all prior distributed broadcasting mechanisms, when a TCDS is preferred over a connected dominating sets (CDS). Like all other algorithms that depend on local topology information, THP is not reliable when the topology changes frequently, and there is a clear trade-off between reliability and efficiency. We describe and analyze two enhancements to THP that address the lack of reliability of neighbor information. First we adopt a virtual radio range (VR), shorter than the physical radio range (RR), and consider as one-hop neighbors only those nodes within VR (we do not use two different radio ranges, as in prior work, because it can incur additional interference). The gap between VR and RR works as a buffer zone, in which nodes can move without loss of connectivity. Second, upon receiving a broadcast packet, the forwarder list in the packet header is analyzed together with the current information about the local neighborhood. Based on that, a node may decide to broadcast the packet even though it has not been selected as a forwarder. We conduct extensive simulations and show that AODV-THP with these two enhancements attains better performance than AODV in terms of delivery ratio, control overhead, packet collisions, and end-to-end delay.