New measures for multicast gain and their application to IPTV delivery in WiMAX-based access networks

Support for multicasting, wide coverage range and high bandwidth, makes WiMAX a leading solution to deliver bandwidth-hungry services like IPTV to mobile subscribers. The smallest logical bandwidth allocation unit in OFDMA-based WiMAX is a slot. In this article, we use the term slot to introduce a new performance criterion, called multicast gain, which can be used for computing multicast efficiency. We analyze multicast transmission for delivery of live TV channels in WiMAX-based access networks, and determine the gain to be expected for access links in order to quantify the benefits of multicasting. We show that for unpopular TV channels, using unicast flows can be a better choice.

[1]  A. Bacioccola,et al.  A downlink data region allocation algorithm for IEEE 802.16e OFDMA , 2007, 2007 6th International Conference on Information, Communications & Signal Processing.

[2]  Didier Sornette,et al.  Theory of Zipf's Law and Beyond , 2009 .

[3]  Woo-Yong Lee,et al.  Design and analysis of hybrid approach to mobile TV service over WiMAX network , 2009, 2009 2nd IFIP Wireless Days (WD).

[4]  Kamran Etemad,et al.  Multicast and broadcast multimedia services in mobile WiMax networks , 2009, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[5]  Anan Phonphoem,et al.  Performance Analysis and Comparison Between Multicast and Unicast over Infrastructure Wireless LAN , 2006, AINTEC.

[6]  Junyu Lai,et al.  Unicast versus Multicast for Live TV Delivery in Networks with Tree Topology , 2010, WWIC.

[7]  Piet Van Mieghem,et al.  On the efficiency of multicast , 2001, TNET.

[8]  Marvin A. Sirbu,et al.  Pricing Multicast Communication: A Cost-Based Approach , 2001, Telecommun. Syst..

[9]  Raj Jain,et al.  Capacity Evaluation for IEEE 802.16e Mobile WiMAX , 2010, J. Comput. Networks Commun..

[10]  Pablo Rodriguez,et al.  Watching television over an IP network , 2008, IMC '08.

[11]  Seungjoon Lee,et al.  Modeling channel popularity dynamics in a large IPTV system , 2009, SIGMETRICS '09.

[12]  Loutfi Nuaymi,et al.  Wimax Technology for Broadband Wireless Access , 2007 .

[13]  Gerard O'Driscoll.  Next Generation IPTV Services and Technologies , 2008 .

[14]  Bernd E. Wolfinger,et al.  Decision Support for the Usage of Multicast versus Unicast in Broadband TV Networks , 2010, 2010 Sixth Advanced International Conference on Telecommunications.

[15]  Samuli Aalto,et al.  Multicasting vs. unicasting in mobile communication systems , 2002, WOWMOM '02.

[16]  Yuntao Shi,et al.  Optimized Multicast Service Management in a Mobile WiMAX TV System , 2009, 2009 6th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference.