Optimal Information Centric Caching in 5G Device-to-Device Communications

Device-to-Device (D2D) communications are a prominent feature of 5G systems, introduced to provide a native support to distributed services inmobile environments. D2D technologies enable straight interactions betweenmobile terminals without a compulsory involvement of base stations. In thismanuscript, we study and propose an optimized caching strategy to content distribution on top of D2D technology, based on Information Centric Networking (ICN) principles. The rationale is that ICN architectures can provide seamless support tomobile services and decouple contents fromnode identifiers, thus providing a promisingmatch withD2D requirements. To this end, a novel fluid-basedmodel in proposed hereby that catches the interplay between ICN functionalities, D2D requirements, and 5G specifications. Then, based on thismodel, an optimal content replication problemis formulated, encompassing caching overhead and system load. Additionally, this problemis thoroughly analyzed to prove that it has an optimal solution with time threshold form. A practical algorithm zeta* -OCP is further proposed in order to implement the optimal caching control in realistic environments. Finally, amassive simulation campaign is carried out to test the proposed algorithmin comparison to state-of-the-art solutions.