Efficient data retrieval scheduling for multi-channel wireless data broadcast

Wireless data broadcast is an efficient technique of disseminating data simultaneously to a large number of mobile clients. In many information services, the users may query multiple data items at a time. In this paper, we study the data retrieval scheduling problem from the client's point of view. We formally define the Largest Number Data Retrieval (LNDR) problem with the objective of downloading the largest number of requested data items in a given time duration, and the Minimum Cost Data Retrieval (MCDR) problem which aims at downloading a set of data items with the minimum energy consumption. When the time needed for channel switching can be ignored, a Maximum Matching optimal algorithm is exhibited for LNDR which requires only polynomial time; when the switching time cannot be neglected, LNDR is proven to be NP-hard and a greedy algorithm with constant approximation ratio is developed. We also prove that the MCDR problem is NP-hard to be approximated within to any nontrivial factor and a parameterized heuristic is devised to solve MCDR non-optimally.