Coded Caching in a Multi-Server System with Random Topology

TL;DR

This paper investigates coded caching in a multi-server system with random user-server connections, proposing a joint storage and caching scheme that balances latency and storage efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel joint storage and proactive caching scheme leveraging coded storage across servers and uncoded user caches, analyzing delivery latency in a multi-server setting.

Findings

Successive transmission achieves latency comparable to a single server.

Increasing server storage reduces latency gap.

Redundancy across servers influences delivery performance.

Abstract

Cache-aided content delivery is studied in a multi-server system with $P$ servers and $K$ users, each equipped with a local cache memory. In the delivery phase, each user connects randomly to any $\rho$ out of $P$ servers. Thanks to the availability of multiple servers, which model small base stations with limited storage capacity, user demands can be satisfied with reduced storage capacity at each server and reduced delivery rate per server; however, this also leads to reduced multicasting opportunities compared to a single server serving all the users simultaneously. A joint storage and proactive caching scheme is proposed, which exploits coded storage across the servers, uncoded cache placement at the users, and coded delivery. The delivery \textit{latency} is studied for both \textit{successive} and \textit{simultaneous} transmission from the servers. It is shown that, with successive transmission the achievable average delivery latency is comparable to that achieved by a single server, while the gap between the two depends on $\rho$, the available redundancy across servers, and can be reduced by increasing the storage capacity at the SBSs.