Adaptive batching scheme for multicast video-on-demand systems

In this paper, an adaptive algorithm is developed for providing true video on demand (VoD) services in a multicast environment. In conventional batching schemes, the batching time of the system is fixed and the performance of such static schemes is highly dependent on the selection of the batching time. If the batching time is wrongly estimated, the performance of the system will be greatly degraded. Our algorithm tries to dynamically find the optimal batching time by the newly updated arrival rate so as to minimize the bandwidth requirement. The results show that the system performance of the adaptive approach is always better than the static scheme in terms of total bandwidth requirement and customer reneging probability, especially in using long batching time for the high arrival rate.