Title
Performance and Implications of RAN Caching in LTE Mobile Networks: A Real Traffic Analysis
Abstract
Deploying caches in mobile networks, especially in the radio access network (RAN) is regarded as a promising way to improve mobile user experiences and alleviate the increasing pressure of traffic growth. However, the characteristics of mobile traffic and the performance of RAN caching still remains unclear. In this paper, we extensively analyze the traffic characteristics, the content popularity and the cache performance using a unique dataset collected from a commercial LTE network of China Mobile, from the perspective of mobile access network. The dataset spans nearly a week and consists of a collection of approximately 62.1 millions HTTP sessions, generated by more than 3200 users distributed across three base stations. Based on this realistic dataset, we observe that HTTP traffic can be reduced by 24.4% on average and the hit ratio can reach up to 42.2%, using 100GB cache size. The implications on some fundamental design issues of practical RAN caching systems, including reasonable size of RAN cache, suitable locations of cache deployment and potential benefits of collaborative RAN caching, are further presented. We believe our findings will shed light on practical RAN caching system design.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1109/SAHCN.2016.7733006
2016 13th Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON)
Keywords
Field
DocType
LTE mobile networks,traffic analysis,radio access network,mobile traffic,China Mobile,mobile access network,base stations,HTTP,RAN caching systems
Mobile computing,Mobile search,IMT Advanced,Cache,Mobile station,Computer science,Public land mobile network,Computer network,Small cell,Radio access network,Distributed computing
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-5090-1733-1
3
0.40
References 
Authors
13
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Tao Lin119611.39
Hongjia Li2214.26
Haiyong Xie3112169.10
Jiasi Chen418514.80
Huajun Cui592.94
guoqiang zhang6134.06
Wei An7507.99
Yang Li820815.35