Hypergraph-Based Analysis of Clustered Co-Operative Beamforming with Application to Edge Caching

The evaluation of the performance of clustered co-operative beamforming in cellular networks generally requires the solution of complex nonconvex optimization problems. In this letter, a framework based on a hypergraph formalism is proposed that enables the derivation of a performance characterization of clustered cooperative beamforming in terms of per-user degrees of freedom (DoF) via the efficient solution of a coloring problem. An emerging scenario in which clusters of co-operative base stations (BSs) arise is given by cellular networks with edge caching. In fact, clusters of BSs that share the same requested files can jointly beamform the corresponding encoded signals. Based on this observation, the proposed framework is applied to obtain quantitative insights into the optimal use of cache and backhaul resources in cellular systems with edge caching. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the merits of the proposed framework.