Enabling Adaptive Data Prefetching in 5G Mobile Networks with Edge Caching

The exponential growth of data traffic volume dominates the demand for the next generation mobile networks (5G). The consistent and satisfied quality of experience (QoE) is one of the leading challenges of provisioning services in 5G mobile networks. Thus, in this paper, we propose a novel adaptive prefetching scheme to compensate the undesired transmission conditions in the 5G mobile network by extending the content prefetching concept from the users to the network. Specifically, an optimization problem is proposed for a prefetching scheme that adaptively retrieves users' data to access nodes and (or) user equipments (UEs) before the actual requests according to the network status, QoE status, predicted data rates, and mobility patterns of users. For the sake of tractability, the prefetching problem is transferred to a convex problem that can be solved efficiently. Accordingly, to implement the proposed schemes in the 5G network, system interactions among entities in the network are designed to realize prefetching-related functions. A signaling protocol to support the adaptive prefetching scheme is also presented. Simulation results show that an adaptive prefetching scheme can improve the network performance significantly