An edge caching scheme to distribute content in vehicular networks

Vehicular content networks (VCNs), which distribute medium-volume contents to vehicles in a fully distributed manner, represent the key enabling technology of vehicular infotainment applications. In VCNs, the road-side units (RSUs) cache replicas of contents on the edge of networks to facilitate the timely content delivery to driving-through vehicles when requested. However, due to the limited storage at RSUs and soaring content size for distribution, RSUs can only selectively cache content replicas. The edge caching scheme in RSUs, therefore, becomes a fundamental issue in VCNs. This paper addresses the issue by developing an edge caching scheme in RSUs. Specifically, we first analyze the features of vehicular content requests based on the content access pattern, vehicle's velocity, and road traffic density. A model is then proposed to determine whether and where to obtain the replica of content when the moving vehicle requests it. After this, a cross-entropy-based dynamic content caching scheme is proposed accordingly to cache the contents at the edge of VCNs based on the requests of vehicles and the cooperation among RSUs. Finally, the performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated by extensive simulation experiments.