Centralized Coded Caching Schemes: A Hypergraph Theoretical Approach

The centralized coded caching scheme is a technique proposed by Maddah-Ali and Niesen as a method to reduce the network burden in peak times in a wireless network system. Yan et al reformulate the problem as designing a corresponding placement delivery array and propose two new schemes from this perspective. These schemes significantly reduce the rate compared with the uncoded caching schemes. However, to implement these schemes, each file should be cut into F pieces, where F grows exponentially with the number of users K. Such a constraint is obviously infeasible in the practical setting, especially when K is large. Thus, it is desirable to design caching schemes with constant rate R (independent of K) as well as smaller F. In this paper, we view the centralized coded caching problem in a hypergraph perspective and show that designing a feasible placement delivery array is equivalent to constructing a linear and (6,3)-free 3-uniform 3-partite hypergraph. Several new results and constructions arise from our novel point of view. First, by using the famous (6,3)-theorem in extremal graph theory, we show that constant rate placement delivery arrays with F growing linearly with K do not exist. Second, we present two infinite classes of placement delivery arrays to show that constant rate caching schemes with F growing sub-exponentially with K do exist.