Rate-Memory Trade-Off for Caching and Delivery of Correlated Sources

TL;DR

This paper explores the fundamental limits of cache-aided content delivery for correlated sources, proposing a correlation-aware two-step scheme that efficiently compresses, caches, and delivers content with near-optimal rates.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-step source coding scheme combining Gray-Wyner compression with cache-aided multicast, tailored for correlated sources in broadcast networks.

Findings

Achieves optimal rate-memory tradeoff in certain regimes for two-file networks.

Within half of the joint entropy for all cache sizes in three-file networks.

Matches lower bounds for large cache capacities in multi-file scenarios.

Abstract

This paper studies the fundamental limits of content delivery in a cache-aided broadcast network for correlated content generated by a discrete memoryless source with arbitrary joint distribution. Each receiver is equipped with a cache of equal capacity, and the requested files are delivered over a shared error-free broadcast link. A class of achievable correlation-aware schemes based on a two-step source coding approach is proposed. Library files are first compressed, and then cached and delivered using a combination of correlation-unaware multiple-request cache-aided coded multicast schemes. The first step uses Gray-Wyner source coding to represent the library via private descriptions and descriptions that are common to more than one file. The second step then becomes a multiple-request caching problem, where the demand structure is dictated by the configuration of the compressed library, and it is interesting in its own right. The performance of the proposed two-step scheme is evaluated by comparing its achievable rate with a lower bound on the optimal peak and average rate-memory tradeoffs in a two-file multiple-receiver network, and in a three-file two-receiver network. Specifically, in a network with two files and two receivers, the achievable rate matches the lower bound for a significant memory regime and it is within half of the conditional entropy of files for all other memory values. In the three-file two-receiver network, the two-step strategy achieves the lower bound for large cache capacities, and it is within half of the joint entropy of two of the sources conditioned on the third one for all other cache sizes.