Caching has attracted significant attention recently because it holds the promise of scaling the service capability of mobile networks. Modern mobile networks are capable of achieving data rates of Gbps, yet they may still fail to meet the predicted bandwidth requirements of future mobile applications. A recent report from Cisco forecasts that mobile data traffic will grow to 77.49 EB per month in 2022. In theory, a human brain may process up to 100 T bits per second. Even though this does not necessarily reflect the ultimate bandwidth required by a human being, a huge gap between bandwidth demand and provisioning may still exist in the near future. Unfortunately, on-demand transmission which dominates current mobile network architectures has almost achieved its performance limits revealed by Shannon in 1948. Because of this and other limitations it is time to envision paradigm-shifting mobile network architectures for the sixth generation (6G) of mobile networks. In this chapter, we shall present a brief overview of the technical content of this book. In particular, this book mainly covers five major topics belonging to edge caching for mobile networks. They are fundamental limits of caching, asymptotic analysis of caching in large mobile networks, resource allocation for edge caching, caching with time-varying popularity and recommendation systems, and some typical applications of edge caching.

Chapter Contents:

• 1.1 Fundamental limits of caching: An information-theoretic perspective
• 1.1.1 Coded caching for error-free channels
• 1.1.2 Caching over wireless channels
• 1.1.3 Data compression and secrecy preservation for caching
• 1.2 Caching in large mobile networks: Asymptotic analysis
• 1.2.1 Scaling laws for mobile networks without fixed infrastructure
• 1.2.2 Scaling laws for caching with hierarchical cooperation
• 1.2.3 Stochastic geometry approaches for caching
• 1.3 Resource allocation for caching: A game-theoretic perspective
• 1.3.1 Dynamic pricing for caching
• 1.3.2 Auction approaches for caching
• 1.3.3 Contract theory for caching
• 1.3.4 Mean-field game theory for caching
• 1.4 Caching with time-varying popularity and recommendation systems
• 1.4.1 Popularity dynamics in the time and spatial domain
• 1.4.2 Joint caching and recommendation
• 1.5 Some applications of caching in mobile networks
• 1.5.1 Caching for mobile social networks
• 1.5.2 Caching for CRANs, UAVs, and MEC
• 1.6 Organization of the book
• References

Inspec keywords: telecommunication traffic; 6G mobile communication; cache storage; mobile computing; recommender systems; resource allocation

Other keywords: recommendation systems; resource allocation; edge caching; on-demand transmission; mobile data traffic; paradigm-shifting mobile network architectures; sixth generation mobile networks; time-varying popularity

Subjects: Mobile, ubiquitous and pervasive computing; Mobile radio systems; File organisation