Caching In Wireless Multihop Device-To-Device Networks

We consider a wireless device-to-device (D2D) network in which the nodes are uniformly distributed at random over the network area and can cache information from a library of possible messages (files). Each node requests a file in the library independently at random, according to a given popularity distribution, and downloads from other nodes having the requested file in their local cache via multihop transmission. Under the classical "protocol model" of wireless ad hoc networks, we characterize the optimal throughput scaling law by presenting a feasible scheme formed by a decentralized caching policy for the parameter regimes of interest and a local multihop transmission protocol. The scaling law optimality of the proposed strategy is shown by deriving a new throughput upper bound. Surprisingly, we show that decentralized uniform random caching yields optimal scaling in most of the system interesting regimes. We also observe that caching improves the throughput scaling law of classical ad hoc networks, and that multihop improves the previously derived scaling law of caching wireless networks under one-hop transmission.