Coded Caching for Combination Networks with Multiaccess

Abstract: In a traditional $(H, r)$ combination network, each user is connected to a unique set of $r$ relays. However, few research efforts to consider $(H, r, u)$ multiaccess combination network problem where each $u$ users are connected to a unique set of $r$ relays. A naive strategy to obtain a coded caching scheme for $(H, r, u)$ multiaccess combination network is by $u$ times repeated application of a coded caching scheme for a traditional $(H, r)$ combination network. Obviously, the transmission load for each relay of this trivial scheme is exactly $u$ times that of the original scheme, which implies that as the number of users multiplies, the transmission load for each relay will also multiply. Therefore, it is very meaningful to design a coded caching scheme for $(H, r, u)$ multiaccess combination network with lower transmission load for each relay. In this paper, by directly applying the well known coding method (proposed by Zewail and Yener) for $(H, r)$ combination network, a coded caching scheme (ZY scheme) for $(H, r, u)$ multiaccess combination network is obtained. However, the subpacketization of this scheme has exponential order with the number of users, which leads to a high implementation complexity. In order to reduce the subpacketization, a direct construction of a coded caching scheme for $(H, r, u)$ multiaccess combination network is proposed by means of Combinational Design Theory, where the parameter $u$ must be a combinatorial number. For arbitrary parameter $u$, a hybrid construction of a coded caching scheme for $(H, r, u)$ multiaccess combination network is proposed based on our direct construction. Theoretical and numerical analysis show that our last two schemes have smaller transmission load for each relay compared with the trivial scheme, and have much lower subpacketization compared with ZY scheme.