A Novel Scheme for Coded Caching with Coded Placement in Small Memory Regime

This paper presents a novel achievable scheme for coded caching systems with \(N\) files and \(K\) users, specifically when \(N \leq K\). This new scheme employs linear coding both during the placement phase - where cache contents are linear combinations of files from the library - and the delivery phase. The multi-step delivery phase enables users to decode the cached coded content and eliminate interference effectively. In the small memory regime, the proposed scheme outperforms existing methods, particularly when \(K\) and \(N\) values are similar, it maintains manageable sub-packetization levels, and operates over a finite field of size \(3\) regardless of the system parameters.