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Recently, content-aware-enabled distributed caching relying on local small-cell base stations (SBSs), namely, smallcell caching, has been intensively studied for reducing transmission latency as well as alleviating the traffic load over backhaul channels. In this paper, we consider a commercialized small-cell caching system consisting of a network service provider (NSP), several content providers (CPs), and multiple mobile users (MUs). The NSP, as a network facility monopolist in charge of the SBSs, leases its resources to the CPs for gaining profits. At the same time, the CPs are intended to rent the SBSs for providing better downloading services to the MUs. We focus on solving the profit maximization problem for the NSP within the framework of contract theory. To be specific, we first formulate the utility functions of the NSP and the CPs by modeling the MUs and SBSs as two independent Poisson point processes. Then, we develop the optimal contract problem for an information asymmetric scenario, where the NSP only knows the distribution of CPs' popularity among the MUs. Also, we derive the necessary and sufficient conditions of feasible contracts. Lastly, the optimal contract solutions are proposed with different CPs' popularity parameter γ. Numerical results are provided to show the optimal quality and the optimal price designed for each CP. In addition, we find that the proposed contract-based mechanism is superior to the benchmarks from the perspective of maximizing the NSP's profit.
Liu et al. (2017) studied this question.