Full coded caching gains for cache-less users

Within the context of coded caching, the work reveals the interesting connection between having multiple transmitters and having heterogeneity in the cache sizes of the receivers. Our work effectively shows that having multiple transmit antennas – while providing full multiplexing gains – can also simultaneously completely remove the performance penalties that are typically associated to cache-size unevenness. Focusing on the multiple-input single-output Broadcast Channel, the work first identifies the performance limits of the extreme case where cache-aided users coincide with users that do not have caches, and then expands the analysis to the case where both user groups are cache-aided but with heterogeneous cache-sizes. In the first case, the main contribution is a new algorithm that employs perfect matchings on a bipartite graph to offer full multiplexing as well as full coded-caching gains to both cache-aided as well as cache-less users. An interesting conclusion is that, starting from a single-stream centralized coded caching setting with normalized cache size γ, then adding L antennas allows for the addition of approximately L/γ extra cache-less users, at no added delay costs. Similarly surprising is the finding that, starting off with a single-antenna hybrid system (with both cache-less and cacheaided users), then adding L-1 antennas to the transmitter, as well as endowing the cache-less uses with a cumulative normalized cache size Γ2, increases the Degrees of Freedom by a multiplicative factor of up to Γ2 + L.