Layer-Encoded MBMS Channel Allocation for 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. To achieve this, it is essential to adopt the layer-encoding (i.e., scalable-coding) technique to encode multiple layers of multimedia data. This paper investigates the distribution of layer-encoded multimedia data for UMTS MBMS. Specifically, we propose a new channel allocation scheme for layer-encoded MBMS. The performance of our scheme is evaluated through our simulation model.