Channel quality-based AMC and smart scheduling scheme for SVC video transmission in LTE MBSFN networks

Abstract

Mobile TV and Video on Demand (VoD) streaming services represents an important service which will be provided by Fourth Generation (4G) cellular networks. Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) is one of the most successful 4G technologies used by most of the 4G operators for delivering mobile broadband. In the past, cellular systems have mostly focused on unicast transmission systems. But, with the adoption of new services which are intended to be delivered to a broad range of users, multicast and broadcast systems are becoming widely popular. Enhanced Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (EMBMS) is defined in 3GPP specification to support download delivery and streaming delivery to group users in LTE mobile networks. In 3GPP Release 8 specification, the EMBMS transmission is classified into single-cell transmission and MBSFN (Multicast Broadcast Single Frequency Network) transmission. H.264 was the recommended video codec for Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) MBMS service. However, the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extension of H.264 allows efficient temporal, spatial and quality scalabilities. In this paper, we propose a video streaming method with SVC for MBSFN networks with adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) and frequency scheduling based on distribution of users in different channel quality regions. Through simulations we demonstrate that spectrum savings in the order of 72 to 82% is achievable in different user distribution scenarios with our proposed scheme. These savings in spectrum can be used for serving other MBSFN, single cell MBMS or unicast bearers, and it can also be used for increasing the video quality of the same MBSFN bearer.