Coded Caching with Heterogeneous User Profiles

TL;DR

This paper introduces three coded caching schemes tailored for heterogeneous user profiles, addressing the challenge of users with different file demand sets, and compares their performance to optimize network traffic load.

Contribution

It proposes three novel coded caching schemes that account for user profile heterogeneity, a scenario underexplored in prior research.

Findings

The schemes outperform each other under different conditions.

All schemes are evaluated against a theoretical lower bound.

The paper highlights the importance of considering user heterogeneity in caching strategies.

Abstract

Coded caching utilizes pre-fetching during off-peak hours and multi-casting for delivery in order to balance the traffic load in communication networks. Several works have studied the achievable peak and average rates under different conditions: variable file lengths or popularities, variable cache sizes, decentralized networks, etc. However, very few have considered the possibility of heterogeneous user profiles, despite modern content providers are investing heavily in categorizing users according to their habits and preferences. This paper proposes three coded caching schemes with uncoded pre-fetching for scenarios where end users are grouped into classes with different file demand sets (FDS). One scheme ignores the difference between the classes, another ignores the intersection between them and the third decouples the delivery of files common to all FDS from those unique to a single class. The transmission rates of the three schemes are compared with a lower bound to evaluate their gap to optimality, and with each other to show that each scheme can outperform the other two when certain conditions are met.