Satellite Multicast for Relieving Terrestrial eMBMS: System-Level Study

This paper demonstrates that satellite can relieve the LTE terrestrial network of a significant part of the evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) traffic. A system level simulator was designed in order to simulate with a high level of accuracy point to point communications, eMBMS, and satellite broadcast. A Video on Demand scenario was chosen to illustrate the system performance. Firstly, it is shown that mobile users in a suburban environment can benefit from broadcast services directly from the satellite. It is then demonstrated that the performance of satellite broadcast is comparable to eMBMS in areas where eNBs are sparsely located. However, in such areas, simulations show that allocating resources to eMBMS dramatically decreases unicast network performance. The study allows concluding that service providers could benefit from the use of satellite to release precious resources in suburban areas covered by the satellite beam.