Efficient IP-based TV service over UMTS networks

The problem of providing an efficient and low-cost video streaming service over wireless access networks is considered in this work. In order to tackle the "last mile" bottleneck for video delivery to the home, we propose a content-aware architecture, that incorporates popularity-dependent video patching with application-enabled multicast content delivery. The key idea is to exploit the Broadcast/Multicast Service Center (BM-SC) in UniversalMobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks, by forwarding individual requests for popular data to the BM-SC, and then to serve these requests efficiently by multicast content distribution. The proposed method offers a tremendous bandwidth saving, in comparison with the MAC-enabled multicasting currently exists in wireless networks. We analyze the conditions under which multicast content delivery offers a better QoS, in terms of service delay, over the individual service currently used for video streaming.