A hybrid unicast broadcast content delivery framework.

The era of ubiquitous access to a rich selection of interactive and high quality multimedia has begun; with it, the term "data tsunami" has been coined to describe the impending wave of data traffic set to overwhelm mobile networks. Understandably, this has focused the efforts of the research community, achieving notable advances in compression algorithms, further reducing the bitrate of multimedia, as well as spectral efficiency improvements on the channels with which it is delivered. As it stands, these advances alone will soon be outpaced by the continued growth of demand. Research into this problem from a higher viewpoint reveals two diverging trends: Mobile Broadcast is expected to play a significant role in reducing the burden of delivering next generation multimedia to mobile devices. For any reasonable efficiency gains using mobile broadcast technology, interest from multiple users, in the same content is required. Meanwhile, content creators and broadcasters are diverging from traditional single stream offerings, providing greater personal choice for media consumption as well as tailoring services for more capable devices though enhancements of live broadcast streams. Given the unique and complex problem the aforementioned diverging trends present, the research herein explores the development of a standards compliant, multi-stream aware framework for implementation within mobile network infrastructure. Providing a multimedia centric, hybrid use of unicast and broadcast delivery methods, the framework allows mobile network operators the efficiency gains of broadcast whilst continuing to offer personalised experiences to customers. First, an open source system level LTE simulation platform is extended to support broadcast. This work is then characterised and validated to be 3GPP standards compliant. Next a Hybrid Unicast Broadcast Synchronisation (HUBS) framework is developed for multi stream multimedia content. This has the capability to dynamically vary broadcast resource allocation, increasing cell efficiency whilst minimising the time error between streams. Finally the HUBS framework is further expanded, making use of scalable video content for more precise synchronisation and resource utilisation