A bandwidth and effective hit optimal cache scheme for wireless data access networks with client injected updates

In this paper, we propose an optimal cache replacement policy for data access applications in wireless networks where data updates are injected from all the clients. The goal of the policy is to increase effective hits in the client caches and in turn, make efficient use of the network bandwidth in wireless environment. To serve the applications with the most updated data, we also propose two enhanced cache access policies making copies of data objects strongly consistent. We analytically prove that a cache system, with a combination of our cache access and replacement policy, guarantees the optimal number of effective cache hits and optimal cost (in terms of network bandwidth) per data object access. Results from both analysis and extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed policies outperform the popular Least Frequently Used (LFU) scheme in terms of both effective hits and bandwidth consumption. Our flexible system model makes the proposed policies equally applicable to applications for the existing 3G, as well as upcoming LTE, LTE Advanced and WiMAX wireless data access networks. 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.