A Study on Layer-Encoded MBMS Channel Allocation over Mobile Networks

The multimedia broadcast/multicast service (MBMS) originally proposed by UMTS supports the delivery of multimedia streams to a group of mobile subscribers. With the heterogeneity of device capability and the variety of subscriber preference, an MBMS source has to provide multiple levels of service quality to its group members. The provisioning of multi-level MBMS can be achieved by incorporating the layer-encoding (i.e., scalable-coding) technique. With scalable coding, multiple layers of multimedia data can be encoded, and be properly distributed to various kinds of recipients. This paper investigates the distribution of layer-encoded multimedia data for MBMS. Specifically, we propose a new channel allocation scheme, called Dedicated Channel (DCH) Complementing (DC) scheme, for layer-encoded MBMS. Based on our DC scheme, several channel allocation policies are presented, and the performance of our DC scheme is evaluated through our developed analytic and simulation models. Index Terms Mobile Networks, Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Service (MBMS), Performance Analysis, Scalable Coding August 3, 2007 DRAFT 2