Social-Aware Edge Caching Strategy of Video Resources in 5G Ultra-Dense Network

Abstract

The video traffic offloading in edge networks is an effective method for remission of congestion of backward paths in 5G networks by continual optimization of video distribution to promote scale and efficiency of video delivery in edge networks (e.g., D2D-based near-end sharing). Because the video resources are dispersedly cached in local buffer of mobile devices of video users, the management of local video resources of video users in edge networks (e.g., caching and removing of local videos) causes dynamic variation of video distribution in networks. The real-time adjustment of local resources of users in terms of the influence levels (e.g., promotion and recession) of video sharing performance is significant for the continual distribution optimization. In this paper, we propose a novel Social-aware Edge Caching Strategy of Video Resources in 5G Ultra-Dense Network (SECS). SECS designs an estimation method of interest domain of users, which employs the Spectral Clustering to generate initial video clusters and makes use of the Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) to refine the initial video clusters. A user clustering method is proposed, which enables the users with common and similar interests to be clustered into the same groups by estimating similarity levels of interest domain between users. SECS designs a performance-aware video caching strategy, which enables the users intelligently implement management (caching and removing) of local video resources in terms of influence for the intragroup sharing performance. Extensive tests show how SECS achieves much better performance results in comparison with the state-of-the-art solutions.