Scalable Video Multicast in Hybrid 3G/Ad-Hoc Networks

Mobile video broadcasting service, or mobile TV, is expected to become a popular application for 3G wireless network operators. Most existing solutions for video BroadCast MultiCast Services (BCMCS) in 3G networks employ a single transmission rate to cover all viewers. The system-wide video quality of the cell is therefore throttled by a few viewers close to the boundary, and is far from reaching the social-optimum allowed by the radio resources available at the base station. In this paper, the authors propose a novel scalable video broadcast/multicast solution, SV-BCMCS, that efficiently integrates scalable video coding, 3G broadcast and ad-hoc forwarding to balance the system-wide and worst-case video quality of all viewers at 3G cell.