The dramatic growth of data traffic during the past decade has challenged wireless networks to provide new mechanisms to support such demand. Fast deployable wireless networks supported by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are a promising solution, especially to support in crowded scenarios with high peaks of traffic. Nevertheless, mounting a Base Station (BS) on UAVs (UAV-BSs) raises several challenges like the saturation of the backhaul (BH) link, needed for the communication between them and the Core Network (CN). In this work, this issue is addressed with the usage of the Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) technology, consisting on the placement of servers, providing computing platforms and storage, directly at the edge of these networks, e.g. on the UAV-BSs. In particular, we consider a portion of a Radio Access Network (RAN) composed by UAV-BSs, equipped with servers that provide the caching capability. The performance is evaluated, using realistic traffic demand, for different traffic characteristics, capacity of the cache server and users' density. Simulation results reveal that the usage of the MEC caching prevents the BH network saturation, since in case a requested content is locally cached, the BH network is not used. As consequences, the user coverage and the access capacity increase up to 33% and 70%, respectively and the experienced delay drops by 30%.

过去十年数据流量的急剧增长对无线网络提出了挑战，需要提供新的机制来支持这种需求。无人机 (UAV) 支持的可快速部署的无线网络是一种很有前途的解决方案，特别是在交通高峰期的拥挤场景中提供支持。然而，在无人机 (UAV-BS) 上安装基站 (BS) 会带来一些挑战，例如回程 (BH) 链路饱和，这是它们与核心网络 (CN) 之间通信所需的。在这项工作中，这个问题通过使用多接入边缘计算 (MEC) 技术得到解决，包括在这些网络的边缘直接放置服务器、提供计算平台和存储，例如在 UAV-BS 上. 特别地，我们考虑由 UAV-BS 组成的无线电接入网络 (RAN) 的一部分，配备提供缓存功能的服务器。使用实际的流量需求，针对不同的流量特征、缓存服务器的容量和用户密度来评估性能。仿真结果表明，MEC 缓存的使用防止了 BH 网络饱和，因为如果请求的内容在本地缓存，则不使用 BH 网络。结果，用户覆盖率和接入容量分别增加了 33% 和 70%，经历的延迟下降了 30%。因为如果请求的内容在本地缓存，则不使用 BH 网络。结果，用户覆盖率和接入容量分别增加了 33% 和 70%，经历的延迟下降了 30%。因为如果请求的内容在本地缓存，则不使用 BH 网络。结果，用户覆盖率和接入容量分别增加了 33% 和 70%，经历的延迟下降了 30%。