Guaranteed Prefetching for Wireless Content Delivery

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing content delivery systems for wireless communication terminals often fail to provide guaranteed fast access to content during peak usage times, leading to inefficiencies in resource utilization and user experience.

Innovation Solution

A method and system that employ a dual prefetching mode, where content is continuously prefetched using a guaranteed mode during identified time-of-day intervals based on user patterns and a best-effort mode outside these intervals, ensuring synchronization and maximizing resource utilization.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If content is continuously prefetched using guaranteed mode during all time intervals, then user experience during peak times is improved, but network resource utilization becomes inefficient during low-usage periods

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvecontent access reliabilityVSAvoidnetwork resource waste
Core Design Contradiction:
ReliabilityVSLoss of energy

Solution Approach 1:

The system implements periodic prefetching by dividing time into intervals based on historical usage patterns. During peak usage intervals, guaranteed prefetching is activated to ensure content availability. During non-peak intervals, prefetching is suspended or reduced to conserve network resources. This periodic activation aligns content delivery with actual user demand cycles.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #19Periodic action

Solution Approach 2:

The prefetching system dynamically adjusts its operation mode based on the current time interval and predicted user activity. The system transitions between guaranteed prefetching mode (high resource allocation) and best-effort mode (low resource allocation) according to temporal patterns, making the content delivery system adaptive to varying network conditions and user behavior.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #15Dynamics

2Loss of energy

If content is prefetched using best-effort mode only, then network resource utilization is optimized, but content access speed during peak times cannot be guaranteed

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvenetwork resource efficiencyVSAvoidcontent access speed
Core Design Contradiction:
Loss of energyVSSpeed

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary prefetching actions during non-peak intervals to prepare content for anticipated peak usage periods. By proactively downloading content in advance during low-utilization periods, the system ensures fast access during peak times without requiring continuous high-resource allocation, thus balancing speed requirements with resource efficiency.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system alternates between best-effort prefetching during non-peak intervals and guaranteed prefetching during peak intervals. This periodic switching allows the system to maintain content access speed during critical periods while optimizing resource efficiency during non-critical periods, achieving both goals at different times.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #19Periodic action

3Manufacturing precision

If guaranteed prefetching is applied to all content items, then synchronization accuracy is improved, but system complexity and processing overhead increase

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvecontent synchronization accuracyVSAvoidprefetching system complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
Manufacturing precisionVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system applies different prefetching qualities to different content items and time intervals. Guaranteed prefetching with high synchronization accuracy is applied only to content accessed during peak intervals. Best-effort prefetching with lower synchronization requirements is applied to content accessed during non-peak intervals. This localized quality adjustment reduces overall system complexity while maintaining accuracy where critical.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #3Local quality

Solution Approach 2:

The system applies guaranteed prefetching partially, only during identified peak time intervals and for specifically identified content items, rather than continuously for all content. This partial application of the expensive guaranteed mode reduces processing overhead and system complexity while maintaining synchronization accuracy for the most critical content-access scenarios.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #16Partial or excessive action

4Productivity

If time-of-day intervals are dynamically identified based on usage patterns, then prefetching efficiency is improved, but monitoring and analysis overhead increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveprefetching efficiencyVSAvoidmonitoring energy consumption
Core Design Contradiction:
ProductivityVSUse of energy by moving object

Solution Approach 1:

The system implements self-service monitoring where the communication terminal autonomously tracks its own content access patterns and usage behavior over time. The terminal locally identifies its peak usage intervals and communicates this information to the content delivery system, eliminating the need for extensive external monitoring infrastructure and reducing overall system energy consumption while maintaining high prefetching efficiency.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #25Self-service

Solution Approach 2:

The system uses feedback from historical usage data to dynamically identify and adjust time-of-day intervals. By continuously monitoring access patterns and updating interval definitions based on this feedback, the system optimizes prefetching efficiency adaptively. The feedback mechanism is implemented efficiently to minimize monitoring overhead while capturing essential usage patterns.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #23Feedback

Data Source

PatentEP3170335B1Efficient content delivery over wireless networks using guaranteed prefetching at selected times-of-day
Publication Date: 2019.12.11 TENSERA NETWORKS
  • EP3170335B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP3170335B1 patent drawingFigure 2

AI summary

A method for content delivery includes defining a guaranteed prefetching mode, in which content is continuously prefetched from a content source (24) to a communication terminal (28) of a user (32) so as to maintain the communication terminal synchronized with the content source. One or more time-of-day intervals, during which the user is expected to access given content, are identified. During the identified time-of-day intervals, the given content is prefetched from the content source to the communication terminal using the guaranteed prefetching mode.