Optimal index and data allocation in multiple broadcast channels

The issue of data broadcast has received much attention in mobile computing. A periodic broadcast of frequently requested data can reduce the workload of the up-link channel and facilitate data access for the mobile user. Since the mobile units usually have limited battery capacity, the minimization of the access latency for the broadcast data is an important problem. The indexing and scheduling techniques on the broadcast data should be considered. We propose a solution to find the optimal index and data allocation, which minimizes the access latency for any number of broadcast channels. We represent all the possible allocations as a tree in which the optimal one is searched, and propose a pruning strategy based on some properties to greatly reduce the search space. Experiments are performed to show the effectiveness of the pruning strategy. Moreover, we propose two heuristics to solve the same problem when the size of the broadcast data is large.