Cache-enabled Device-to-Device Communications: Offloading Gain and Energy Cost

TL;DR

This paper explores how caching files at user devices and controlling helper energy costs can significantly increase offloaded traffic via device-to-device links, balancing offloading gains with energy consumption.

Contribution

It introduces a user-centric protocol for energy cost control and optimizes caching and transmit power to maximize offloading while minimizing helper energy use.

Findings

Significant offloading achieved with low helper energy cost

Optimized caching and power control improve offloading probability

Trade-off between offloading gain and helper energy consumption demonstrated

Abstract

By caching files at users, content delivery traffic can be offloaded via device-to-device (D2D) links if a helper user is willing to transmit the cached file to the user who requests the file. In practice, the user device has limited battery capacity, and may terminate the D2D connection when its battery has little energy left. Thus, taking the battery consumption allowed by the helper users to support D2D into account introduces a reduction in the possible amount of offloading. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between offloading gain of the system and energy cost of each helper user. To this end, we introduce a user-centric protocol to control the energy cost for a helper user to transmit the file. Then, we optimize the proactive caching policy to maximize the offloading opportunity, and optimize the transmit power at each helper to maximize the offloading probability. Finally, we evaluate the overall amount of traffic offloaded to D2D links and evaluate the average energy consumption at each helper, with the optimized caching policy and transmit power. Simulations show that a significant amount of traffic can be offloaded even when the energy cost is kept low.