A Survey on Caching in Mobile Edge Computing

Boosted by the visions of 5G technology, along with the proliferation of IoT devices, we are lucky to bear witness of a tremendous shift within the Internet, mobile computing, and ubiquitous applications pervading people’s daily life. To catch up with the speed of this evolution, new architectures, which enable us to decentralize and focus more on the edge of the network, have to show up. To effectively address the record-breaking growth of data traffic, we also have to come up with new caching mechanisms in coping with users’ demanding QoE along with other aspects, such as data privacy and energy efficiency. In this paper, we intend to begin with reviews on edge caching. First, we make a detailed overview of mobile edge caching. Then, we move on to the QoS and QoE part, discussing the related literature concerning these topics. We then start to address factors concerning edge caching and QoE. Four cutting-edge applications utilizing these technologies with challenges posed by current network architectures are made clear. Our paper closes with some future research directions.

On Edge Caching in Satellite–IoT Networks

<div>The implementation of the Internet of Things (IoT) is mostly done through cellular networks which do not cover the whole world. In addition, the explosive growth of global Internet access demand introduces the need for integrating satellites with cellular IoT networks for coverage extension and backhaul offloading. Operating hybrid satellite-IoT (SIoT) networks, however, might incur excessive service latency and high satellite bandwidth consumption. To tackle these issues, edge caching technology has been considered in SIoT. This article reviews existing research on edge caching-based SIoT networks with illustrative performance evaluation. Various caching design criteria with a focus on two-tier cache-enabled SIoT are discussed. In addition, open research problems on edge caching in SIoT are identified as future research directions and opportunities.</div>

On Edge Caching in Satellite–IoT Networks

<div>The implementation of the Internet of Things (IoT) is mostly done through cellular networks which do not cover the whole world. In addition, the explosive growth of global Internet access demand introduces the need for integrating satellites with cellular IoT networks for coverage extension and backhaul offloading. Operating hybrid satellite-IoT (SIoT) networks, however, might incur excessive service latency and high satellite bandwidth consumption. To tackle these issues, edge caching technology has been considered in SIoT. This article reviews existing research on edge caching-based SIoT networks with illustrative performance evaluation. Various caching design criteria with a focus on two-tier cache-enabled SIoT are discussed. In addition, open research problems on edge caching in SIoT are identified as future research directions and opportunities.</div>

Mobile Edge Caching

Edge caching is a key part of mobile edge computing. It not only can support the necessary task data for edge computing, but also enables powerful Internet of Things applications with massive amounts of data and various types of information in access networks. In this chapter, we present the architecture of the edge caching mechanism and introduce metrics for evaluating caching performance. We then discuss key issues in caching topology design, caching data scheduling, as well as caching server cooperation and present a case study of artificial intelligence–empowered edge caching.