Cooperative mobile-to-mobile file dissemination in cellular networks within a unified radio interface

In this paper, a data dissemination technique is introduced for cellular networks by embedding peer-to-peer data transfer into the hierarchical architecture of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems) for cooperative sharing of data among mobile terminals. Our concept is based on the uplink/downlink traffic imbalance in 3G wireless networks and clearly confirms the social principle ‘‘real egoistic behavior is to cooperate”. It boosts the spectral efficiency of UMTS by enabling direct mobile-to-mobile data transfer and by dynamically allocating users to temporarily unused uplink channels. The results indicate a substantial increase in service probability and overall system throughput, as well as a significant reduction of the expected file download time. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.