Mobility-aware caching for content-centric wireless networks: Modeling and methodology

© 1979-2012 IEEE. As mobile services are shifting from connection- centric communications to content-centric communications, content-centric wireless networking emerges as a promising paradigm to evolve the current network architecture. Caching popular content at the wireless edge, including base stations and user terminals, provides an effective approach to alleviate the heavy burden on backhaul links, as well as lower delays and deployment costs. In contrast to wired networks, a unique characteristic of content-centric wireless networks (CCWNs) is the mobility of mobile users. While it has rarely been considered by existing works on caching design, user mobility contains various helpful side information that can be exploited to improve caching efficiency at both BSS and user terminals. In this article, we present a general framework for mobility-aware caching in CCWNs. Key properties of user mobility patterns that are useful for content caching are first identified, and then different design methodologies for mobility-aware caching are proposed. Moreover, two design examples are provided to illustrate the proposed framework in detail, and interesting future research directions are identified.