Modeling and Performance of Uplink Cache-Enabled Massive MIMO Heterogeneous Networks

Abstract: A significant burden on wireless networks is brought by the uploading of user-generated contents to the Internet by means of applications such as the social media. To cope with this mobile data tsunami, we develop a novel MIMO network architecture with randomly located base stations (BSs) a large number of antennas employing cache-enabled \textit{uplink} transmission. In particular, we formulate a scenario, where the users upload their content to their strongest base stations (BSs), which are Poisson point process (PPP) distributed. In addition, the BSs, exploiting the benefits of massive MIMO, upload their contents to the core network by means of a finite-rate backhaul. After proposing the caching policies, where we propose the {modified} von Mises distribution as the popularity distribution function, we derive the outage probability and the average delivery rate by taking advantage of tools from the deterministic equivalent (DE) and stochastic geometry analyses. Numerical results investigate the realistic performance gains of the proposed heterogeneous cache-enabled uplink on the network in terms of cardinal operating parameters. For example, insights regarding the BSs storage size are exposed. Moreover, the impacts of the key parameters such the file popularity distribution, and the target bitrate are investigated. Specifically, the outage probability decreases if the storage size is increased, while the average delivery rate increases. In addition, the concentration parameter, defining the number of files stored at the intermediate nodes (popularity), affects directly the proposed metrics. A higher target rate results in higher outage because fewer users obey this constraint. Also, we demonstrate that a denser network decreases the outage and increases the delivery rate. Hence, the introduction of caching at the uplink of the system design ameliorates the network performance.