Overall Objective:
The objective of this proposal is to develop a generalized caching framework for managing various forms of costs and rewards in today’s Mobile Content Ecosystems (MCEs). The MCEs comprise network operators, content providers, and the end consumers. The key idea is to introduce Cooperative Networked Caching (CNC) in which popular objects such as electronic books, phone Apps, music, research papers, news stories etc. are cached within local wireless networks for avoiding expensive long-haul object downloads from the content providers’ servers. This mode of caching should be contrasted with traditional caching at the end consumers’ mobile devices, gateway routers, or at proxy servers. Unlike such existing approaches, in the CNC model the entire local wireless network, which can be formed in an ad hoc manner using short range wireless links such as WiFi, Bluetooth or ZigBee, is treated as a shared cache space. The proposal develops optimal CNC mechanisms for a series of cost and reward models, formulated based on today’s emerging Mobile Content Ecosystems (MCEs).