Context-Aware RRM for Opportunistic Content Delivery in Cellular Networks

To opportunistically exploit excess resources available at different times and locations we propose in this paper to include context aware information in the RRM schemes adopted in cellular networks. Both an user and a network centric approaches to content pre-fetching are described and evaluated for different network dimensioning and service scenarios. The obtained results show that for different levels of accuracy in predicting future content requests, operator controlled pre-fetching outperforms the user controlled approach, and that the former can also bring robustness and significant cost reduction as compared to "classical" RRM schemes: the achieved level of performances can be mapped into a tri-dimensional gain region where fewer BSs are needed, or more users can be served, or larger files delivered per user, while maintaining a given level of user-perceived service quality. Finally, considering also the deployment of content caches at the BSs we show that the impact of backhaul limitations on experienced delays can be further mitigated, when there are similar content interests among users.