arXiv subjects

Kai Wan

Publications and source records attributed to Kai Wan.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Coded Caching for Two-Dimensional Multi-Access Networks

This paper studies a novel multi-access coded caching (MACC) model in the two-dimensional (2D) topology, which is a generalization of the one-dimensional (1D) MACC model proposed by Hachem et al. The 2D MACC model is formed by a server containing $N$ files, $K_1\times K_2$ cache-nodes with $M$ files located at a grid with $K_1$ rows and $K_2$ columns, and $K_1\times K_2$ cache-less users where each user is connected to $L^2$ nearby cache-nodes. The server is connected to the users through an error-free shared link, while the users can retrieve the cached content of the connected cache-nodes without cost. Our objective is to minimize the worst-case transmission load over all possible users' demands. In this paper, we first propose a grouping scheme for the case where $K_1$ and $K_2$ are divisible by $L$. By partitioning the cache-nodes and users into $L^2$ groups such that no two users in the same group share any cache-node, we use the shared-link coded caching scheme proposed by Maddah-Ali and Niesen for each group. Then for any model parameters satisfying $\min\{K_1,K_2\}>L$, we propose a transformation approach which constructs a 2D MACC scheme from two classes of 1D MACC schemes in vertical and horizontal projections, respectively. As a result, we can construct 2D MACC schemes that achieve maximum local caching gain and improved coded caching gain, compared to the baseline scheme by a direct extension from 1D MACC schemes.

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arXiv2022

On the Fundamental Limits of Device-to-Device Private Caching under Uncoded Cache Placement and User Collusion

In the coded caching problem, as originally formulated by Maddah-Ali and Niesen, a server communicates via a noiseless shared broadcast link to multiple users that have local storage capability. In order for a user to decode its demanded file from the coded multicast transmission, the demands of all the users must be globally known, which may violate the privacy of the users. To overcome this privacy problem, Wan and Caire recently proposed several schemes that attain coded multicasting gain while simultaneously guarantee information theoretic privacy of the users' demands. In Device-to-Device (D2D) networks, the demand privacy problem is further exacerbated by the fact that each user is also a transmitter, which appears to be needing the knowledge of the files demanded by the remaining users in order to form its coded multicast transmission. This paper shows how to solve this seemingly infeasible problem. The main contribution of this paper is the development of novel achievable and converse bounds for D2D coded caching that are to within a constant factor of one another when privacy of the users' demands must be guaranteed even in the presence of colluding users.

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arXiv2022

On the Optimal Memory-Load Tradeoff of Coded Caching for Location-Based Content

Caching at the wireless edge nodes is a promising way to boost the spatial and spectral efficiency, for the sake of alleviating networks from content-related traffic. Coded caching originally introduced by Maddah-Ali and Niesen significantly speeds up communication efficiency by transmitting multicast messages simultaneously useful to multiple users. Most prior works on coded caching are based on the assumption that each user may request all content in the library. However, in many applications the users are interested only in a limited set of content that depends on their location. Motivated by these considerations, this paper formulates the coded caching problem for location-based content with edge cache nodes. The considered problem includes a content server with access to $N$ location-based files (e.g., High-Definition maps), $K$ edge cache nodes located at different regions, and $K$ users (i.e., vehicles) each of which is in the serving region of one cache node and can retrieve the cached content of this cache node with negligible cost. Depending on the location, each user only requests a file from a location-dependent subset of the library. The objective is to minimize the worst-case load. For this novel coded caching problem, we propose a highly non-trivial converse bound under uncoded cache placement, which shows that a simple achievable scheme is optimal under uncoded cache placement. In addition, this achievable scheme is also proved to be generally order optimal within a factor of $3$. Finally, we extend the coded caching problem for location-based content to the multiaccess coded caching topology originally proposed by Hachem et al., where each user is connected to $L$ nearest cache nodes. When $L \geq 2$, we characterize the exact optimality on the worst-case load.

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arXiv2022

Multiple-antenna Placement Delivery Array for Cache-aided MISO Systems

We consider the cache-aided multiple-input single-output (MISO) broadcast channel, which consists of a server with $L$ antennas and $K$ single-antenna users, where the server contains $N$ files of equal length and each user is equipped with a local cache of size $M$ files. Each user requests an arbitrary file from library. The objective is to design a coded caching scheme based on uncoded placement and one-shot linear delivery, to achieve the maximum sum Degree-of-Freedom (sum-DoF) with low subpacketization. It was shown in the literature that under the constraint of uncoded placement and one-shot linear delivery, the optimal sum-DoF is $L+\frac{KM}{N}$. However, previously proposed schemes for this setting incurred either an exponential subpacketization order in $K$, or required specific conditions in the system parameters $L$, $K$, $M$ and $N$. In this paper, we propose a new combinatorial structure called multiple-antenna placement delivery array (MAPDA). Based on MAPDA and Latin square, the first proposed scheme achieves the optimal sum-DoF $L+\frac{KM}{N}$ with the subpacketization of $K$ when $\frac{KM}{N}+L=K$. Subsequently, for the general case we propose a transformation approach to construct an MAPDA from any $g$-regular PDA (a class of PDA where each integer in the array occurs $g$ times) for the original shared-link coded caching problem. When the original PDA corresponds to the Maddah-Ali and Niesen coded caching scheme, the resulting scheme under the combinatorial structure of MAPDA can achieve the optimal sum-DoF $L+\frac{KM}{N}$ with reduced subpacketization with respect to the existing schemes. The work can be extended to the multiple independent single-antenna transmitters (servers) corresponding to the cache-aided interference channel proposed by Naderializadeh et al. and the scenario of transmitters equipped with multiple antennas.

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arXiv2021

Novel Frameworks for Coded Caching via Cartesian Product with Reduced Subpacketization

Caching prefetches some library content at users' memories during the off-peak times (i.e., {\it placement phase}), such that the number of transmissions during the peak-traffic times (i.e., {\it delivery phase}) are reduced. A coded caching strategy was originally proposed by Maddah-Ali and Niesen (MN) leading to a multicasting gain compared to the conventional uncoded caching, where each message in the delivery phase is useful to multiple users simultaneously. However, the MN coded caching scheme suffers from the high subpacketization which makes it impractical. In order to reduce the subpacketization while retain the multicast opportunities in the delivery phase, Yan et al. proposed a combinatorial structure called placement delivery array (PDA) to design coded caching schemes. In this paper, we propose two novel frameworks for constructing PDA via Cartesian product, which constructs a PDA for $mK_1$ users by the $m$-fold Cartesian product of a PDA for $K_1$ users. By applying the proposed frameworks to some existing PDAs, three novel caching schemes are obtained which can significantly reduce the subpacketization of the MN scheme while slightly increasing the needed number of transmissions. For instance, for the third scheme which works for any number of users and any memory regime, while reducing the coded caching gain by one, the needed subpacketization is at most $O\left(\sqrt{\frac{K}{q}}2^{-\frac{K}{q}}\right)$ of that of the MN scheme, where $K$ is the number of users, $0<z/q<1$ is the memory ratio of each user, and $q,z$ are coprime.

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arXiv2021

Combination Networks with End-user-caches: Novel Achievable and Converse Bounds under Uncoded Cache Placement

Caching is an efficient way to reduce network traffic congestion during peak hours by storing some content at the users' local caches. For the shared-link network with end-user-caches, Maddah-Ali and Niesen proposed a two-phase coded caching strategy. In practice, users may communicate with the server through intermediate relays. This paper studies the tradeoff between the memory size $M$ and the network load $R$ for networks where a server with $N$ files is connected to $H$ relays (without caches), which in turn are connected to $K$ users equipped with caches of $M$ files. When each user is connected to a different subset of $r$ relays, i.e., $K = \binom{H}{r}$, the system is referred to as a {\it combination network with end-user-caches}. In this work, converse bounds are derived for the practically motivated case of {\it uncoded} cache contents, that is, bits of the various files are directly pushed into the user caches without any coding. In this case, once the cache contents and the user demands are known, the problem reduces to a general index coding problem.This paper shows that relying on a well-known "acyclic index coding converse bound" results in converse bounds that are not tight for combination networks with end-user-caches. A novel converse bound that leverages the network topology is proposed, which is the tightest converse bound known to date. As a result of independent interest, an inequality that generalizes the well-known sub-modularity of entropy is derived. Several novel caching schemes are proposed, based on the Maddah-Ali and Niesen cache placement. The proposed schemes are proved: (i) to be (order) optimal for some $(N,M,H,r)$ parameters regimes under the constraint of uncoded cache placement, and (ii) to outperform the state-of-the-art schemes in numerical evaluations.

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arXiv2021

Distributed Linearly Separable Computation

This paper formulates a distributed computation problem, where a master asks $N$ distributed workers to compute a linearly separable function. The task function can be expressed as $K_c$ linear combinations of $K$ messages, where each message is a function of one dataset. Our objective is to find the optimal tradeoff between the computation cost (number of uncoded datasets assigned to each worker) and the communication cost (number of symbols the master must download), such that from the answers of any $N_r$ out of $N$ workers the master can recover the task function with high probability, where the coefficients of the $K_c$ linear combinations are uniformly i.i.d. over some large enough finite field. The formulated problem can be seen as a generalized version of some existing problems, such as distributed gradient coding and distributed linear transform. In this paper, we consider the specific case where the computation cost is minimum, and propose novel achievability schemes and converse bounds for the optimal communication cost. Achievability and converse bounds coincide for some system parameters; when they do not match, we prove that the achievable distributed computing scheme is optimal under the constraint of a widely used `cyclic assignment' scheme on the datasets. Our results also show that when $K = N$, with the same communication cost as the optimal distributed gradient coding scheme proposed by Tandon et al. from which the master recovers one linear combination of $K$ messages, our proposed scheme can let the master recover any additional $N_r - 1$ independent linear combinations of messages with high probability.

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arXiv2021

A New Design Framework for Heterogeneous Uncoded Storage Elastic Computing

Elasticity is one important feature in modern cloud computing systems and can result in computation failure or significantly increase computing time. Such elasticity means that virtual machines over the cloud can be preempted under a short notice (e.g., hours or minutes) if a high-priority job appears; on the other hand, new virtual machines may become available over time to compensate the computing resources. Coded Storage Elastic Computing (CSEC) introduced by Yang et al. in 2018 is an effective and efficient approach to overcome the elasticity and it costs relatively less storage and computation load. However, one of the limitations of the CSEC is that it may only be applied to certain types of computations (e.g., linear) and may be challenging to be applied to more involved computations because the coded data storage and approximation are often needed. Hence, it may be preferred to use uncoded storage by directly copying data into the virtual machines. In addition, based on our own measurement, virtual machines on Amazon EC2 clusters often have heterogeneous computation speed even if they have exactly the same configurations (e.g., CPU, RAM, I/O cost). In this paper, we introduce a new optimization framework on Uncoded Storage Elastic Computing (USEC) systems with heterogeneous computing speed to minimize the overall computation time. Under this framework, we propose optimal solutions of USEC systems with or without straggler tolerance using different storage placements. Our proposed algorithms are evaluated using power iteration applications on Amazon EC2.

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arXiv2021

Multiaccess Coded Caching with Private Demands

Recently Hachem et al. formulated a multiaccess coded caching model which consists of a central server connected to $K$ users via an error-free shared link, and $K$ cache-nodes. Each cache-node is equipped with a local cache and each user can access $L$ neighbouring cache-nodes with a cyclic wrap-around fashion. In this paper, we take the privacy of the users' demands into consideration, i.e., each user can only get its required file and can not get any information about the demands of other users. By storing some private keys at the cache-nodes, we propose a novel transformation approach to transform a non-private multiaccess coded caching scheme into a private multiaccess coded caching scheme.

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arXiv2021

Device-to-Device Private Caching with Trusted Server

In order to preserve the privacy of the users demands from other users, in this paper we formulate a novel information theoretic Device-to-Device (D2D) private caching model by adding a trusted server. In the delivery phase, the trusted server collects the users demands and sends a query to each user, who then broadcasts packets according to this query. Two D2D private caching schemes (uncoded and coded) are proposed in this paper, which are shown to be order optimal.

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arXiv2021

On Coded Caching with Correlated Files

This paper studies the fundamental limits of the shared-link coded caching problem with correlated files, where a server with a library of $N$ files communicates with $K$ users who can locally cache $M$ files. Given an integer $r \in [N]$, correlation is modeled as follows: each r-subset of files contains a unique common block. The tradeoff between the cache size and the average transmitted load is considered. First, a converse bound under the constraint of uncoded cache placement (i.e., each user directly stores a subset of the library bits) is derived. Then, a caching scheme for the case where every user demands a distinct file (possible for $N \geq K$) is shown to be optimal under the constraint of uncoded cache placement. This caching scheme is further proved to be decodable and optimal under the constraint of uncoded cache placement when (i) $KrM \leq 2N$ or $KrM \geq (K - 1)N $or $r \in \{1,2,N- 1,N\}$ for every demand type (i.e., when the demanded file are not necessarily distinct), and (ii) when the number of distinct demanded files is no larger than four. Finally, a two-phase delivery scheme based on interference alignment is shown to be optimal to within a factor of 2 under the constraint of uncoded cache placement for every possible demands. As a by-product, the proposed interference alignment scheme is shown to reduce the (worst-case or average) load of state-of-the-art schemes for the coded caching problem where the users can request multiple files.

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arXiv2021

On the Optimality of D2D Coded Caching with Uncoded Cache Placement and One-shot Delivery

We consider a cache-aided wireless device-to-device (D2D) network of the type introduced by Ji, Caire, and Molisch [1], where the placement phase is orchestrated by a central server. We assume that the devices' caches are filled with uncoded data, and the whole content database is contained in the collection of caches. After the cache placement phase, the files requested by the users are serviced by inter-device multicast communication. For such a system setting, we provide the exact characterization of the optimal load-memory trade-off under the assumptions of uncoded placement and one-shot delivery. In particular, we derive both the minimum average (under uniformly distributed demands) and the minimum worst-case sum-load of the D2D transmissions, for given individual cache memory size at disposal of each user. Furthermore, we show that the performance of the proposed scheme is within factor $4$ of the information-theoretic optimum. Capitalizing on the one-shot delivery property, we also propose an extension of the presented scheme that provides robustness against random user inactivity.

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arXiv2021

On D2D Caching with Uncoded Cache Placement

We consider a cache-aided wireless device-to-device (D2D) network under the constraint of one-shot delivery, where the placement phase is orchestrated by a central server. We assume that the devices' caches are filled with uncoded data, and the whole file database at the server is made available in the collection of caches. Following this phase, the files requested by the users are serviced by inter-device multicast communication. For such a system setting, we provide the exact characterization of load-memory trade-off, by deriving both the minimum average and the minimum peak sum-loads of links between devices, for a given individual memory size at disposal of each user.

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arXiv2021

A Novel Transformation Approach of Shared-link Coded Caching Schemes for Multiaccess Networks

This paper considers the multiaccess coded caching systems formulated by Hachem et al., including a central server containing $N$ files connected to $K$ cache-less users through an error-free shared link, and $K$ cache-nodes, each equipped with a cache memory size of $M$ files. Each user has access to $L$ neighbouring cache-nodes with a cyclic wrap-around topology. The coded caching scheme proposed by Hachem et al. suffers from the case that $L$ does not divide $K$, where the needed number of transmissions (a.k.a. load) is at most four times the load expression for the case where $L$ divides $K$. Our main contribution is to propose a novel {\it transformation} approach to smartly extend the schemes satisfying some conditions for the well known shared-link caching systems to the multiaccess caching systems. Then we can get many coded caching schemes with different subpacketizations for multiaccess coded caching system. These resulting schemes have the maximum local caching gain (i.e., the cached contents stored at any $L$ neighbouring cache-nodes are different such that the number of retrieval packets by each user from the connected cache-nodes is maximal) and the same coded caching gain as the original schemes. Applying the transformation approach to the well-known shared-link coded caching scheme proposed by Maddah-Ali and Niesen, we obtain a new multiaccess coded caching scheme that achieves the same load as the scheme of Hachem et al. but for any system parameters. Under the constraint of the cache placement used in this new multiaccess coded caching scheme, our delivery strategy is approximately optimal when $K$ is sufficiently large. Finally, we also show that the transmission load of the proposed scheme can be further reduced by compressing the multicast message.

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arXiv2021

Cache-Aided Matrix Multiplication Retrieval

Coded caching is a promising technique to smooth out network traffic by storing part of the library content at the users' local caches. The seminal work on coded caching for single file retrieval by Maddah-Ali and Niesen (MAN) showed the existence of a global caching gain that scales with the total memory in the system, in addition to the known local caching gain in uncoded systems. This paper formulates a novel cache-aided matrix multiplication retrieval problem, relevant for data analytics and machine learning applications. In the considered problem, each cache-aided user requests the product of two matrices from the library. A structure-agnostic solution is to treat each possible matrix product as an independent file and use the MAN coded caching scheme for single file retrieval. This paper proposes two structure-aware schemes, which partition each matrix in the library by either rows or columns and let a subset of users cache some sub-matrices, that improve on the structure-agnostic scheme. For the case where the library matrices are "fat" matrices, the structure-aware row-partition scheme is shown to be order optimal under some constraint.

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arXiv2021

Cache-aided General Linear Function Retrieval

Coded Caching, proposed by Maddah-Ali and Niesen (MAN), has the potential to reduce network traffic by pre-storing content in the users' local memories when the network is underutilized and transmitting coded multicast messages that simultaneously benefit many users at once during peak-hour times. This paper considers the linear function retrieval version of the original coded caching setting, where users are interested in retrieving a number of linear combinations of the data points stored at the server, as opposed to a single file. This extends the scope of the Authors' past work that only considered the class of linear functions that operate element-wise over the files. On observing that the existing cache-aided scalar linear function retrieval scheme does not work in the proposed setting, this paper designs a novel coded caching scheme that outperforms uncoded caching schemes that either use unicast transmissions or let each user recover all files in the library.

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arXiv2021

A New Design of Cache-aided Multiuser Private Information Retrieval with Uncoded Prefetching

In the problem of cache-aided multiuser private information retrieval (MuPIR), a set of $K_{\rm u}$ cache-equipped users wish to privately download a set of messages from $N$ distributed databases each holding a library of $K$ messages. The system works in two phases: {\it cache placement (prefetching) phase} in which the users fill up their cache memory, and {\it private delivery phase} in which the users' demands are revealed and they download an answer from each database so that the their desired messages can be recovered while each individual database learns nothing about the identities of the requested messages. The goal is to design the placement and the private delivery phases such that the \emph{load}, which is defined as the total number of downloaded bits normalized by the message size, is minimized given any user memory size. This paper considers the MuPIR problem with two messages, arbitrary number of users and databases where uncoded prefetching is assumed, i.e., the users directly copy some bits from the library as their cached contents. We propose a novel MuPIR scheme inspired by the Maddah-Ali and Niesen (MAN) coded caching scheme. The proposed scheme achieves lower load than any existing schemes, especially the product design (PD), and is shown to be optimal within a factor of $8$ in general and exactly optimal at very high or low memory regime.

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arXiv2021

On Secure Distributed Linearly Separable Computation

Distributed linearly separable computation, where a user asks some distributed servers to compute a linearly separable function, was recently formulated by the same authors and aims to alleviate the bottlenecks of stragglers and communication cost in distributed computation. For this purpose, the data center assigns a subset of input datasets to each server, and each server computes some coded packets on the assigned datasets, which are then sent to the user. The user should recover the task function from the answers of a subset of servers, such the effect of stragglers could be tolerated. In this paper, we formulate a novel secure framework for this distributed linearly separable computation, where we aim to let the user only retrieve the desired task function without obtaining any other information about the input datasets, even if it receives the answers of all servers. In order to preserve the security of the input datasets, some common randomness variable independent of the datasets should be introduced into the transmission. We show that any non-secure linear-coding based computing scheme for the original distributed linearly separable computation problem, can be made secure without increasing the communication cost. Then we focus on the case where the computation cost of each server is minimum and aim to minimize the size of the randomness variable introduced in the system while achieving the optimal communication cost. We first propose an information theoretic converse bound on the randomness size. We then propose secure computing schemes based on two well-known data assignments, namely fractional repetition assignment and cyclic assignment. We then propose a computing scheme with novel assignment, which strictly outperforms the above two schemes. Some additional optimality results are also obtained.

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