Average Bandwidth-Cost vs. Storage Trade-off for BS-assisted Distributed Storage Networks

In this study, we consider a hierarchically structured base station (BS)-assisted cellular system equipped with a backend distributed data storage in which nodes randomly arrive and depart the cell. We numerically motivate and characterize the fundamental trade-off between the average repair bandwidth cost versus storage space where BS communication cost (higher than that of local) and link capacity constraints exist while the number of failed nodes can vary dynamically. We establish the capacity region that is most relevant to 5G and beyond networks, which are layered by design. We hope that this study shall motivate novel regeneration code constructions that will be able to achieve the presented limits.