Optimal scheduling of secondary content for aggregation in video-on-demand systems

We present and evaluate an optimal scheduling algorithm for inserting secondary content for improving resource utilization in VoD systems. The algorithm runs in polynomial time, and is optimal with respect to the total bandwidth usage over the merging interval. We present constraints on content insertion which make the overall QoS of the delivered stream acceptable, and show how our algorithm can satisfy these constraints. We discuss dynamic scenarios with user arrivals and interactions, and show by simulations that content insertion reduces the channel bandwidth requirement to almost half.