Optimal Caching and Routing in Hybrid Networks

Abstract: Hybrid networks consisting of MANET nodes and cellular infrastructure have been recently proposed to improve the performance of military networks. Prior work has demonstrated the benefits of in-network content caching in a wired, Internet context. We investigate the problem of developing optimal routing and caching policies in a hybrid network supporting in-network caching with the goal of minimizing overall content-access delay. Here, needed content may always be accessed at a back-end server via the cellular infrastructure; alternatively, content may also be accessed via cache-equipped "cluster" nodes within the MANET. To access content, MANET nodes must thus decide whether to route to in-MANET cluster nodes or to back-end servers via the cellular infrastructure; the in-MANET cluster nodes must additionally decide which content to cache. We model the cellular path as either i) a congestion-insensitive fixed-delay path or ii) a congestion-sensitive path modeled as an M/M/1 queue. We demonstrate that under the assumption of stationary, independent requests, it is optimal to adopt static caching (i.e., to keep a cache's content fixed over time) based on content popularity. We also show that it is optimal to route to in-MANET caches for content cached there, but to route requests for remaining content via the cellular infrastructure for the congestion-insensitive case and to split traffic between the in-MANET caches and cellular infrastructure for the congestion-sensitive case. We develop a simple distributed algorithm for the joint routing/caching problem and demonstrate its efficacy via simulation.