An Analytical Framework for Delay Optimal Mobile Edge Deployment in Wireless Networks

The emerging edge caching provides an effective way to reduce service delay for mobile users. However, due to high deployment cost of edge hosts, a practical problem is how to achieve minimum delay under a proper edge deployment strategy. In this letter, we provide an analytical framework for delay optimal mobile edge deployment in a partially connected wireless network, where the request files can be cached at the edge hosts and cooperatively transmitted through multiple base stations. In order to deal with the heterogeneous transmission requirements, we separate the entire transmission into backhaul and wireless phases, and propose average user normalized delivery time (AUNDT) as the performance metric. On top of that, we characterize the trade-off relations between the proposed AUNDT and other network deployment parameters. Using the proposed analytical framework, we are able to provide the optimal mobile edge deployment strategy in terms of AUNDT, which provides a useful guideline for future mobile edge deployment.