A New Paradigm for Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting Based on Integrated Communication and Broadcast Networks

This article provides a new paradigm to integrate the Chinese digital television/terrestrial multimedia broadcasting (DTMB) systems with existing mobile communication systems, which can support mobile multimedia broadcasting services with carrier-grade quality. By dividing the services into four categories -digital TV, video on demand, data on demand, and Internet access - a complete design of the layered structure and signaling protocols are presented. Specifically, a subnetwork data unit layer and a modified hybrid ARQ signaling protocol have been proposed. A testbed at Tsinghua University based on DTMB and WLAN/CDMAlx has been successfully implemented, and the experimental results clearly show the effectiveness of the proposed signaling protocols.