Resource management of IP-enabled DVB-T networks in the context of wireless B3G systems

Abstract

The wireless beyond 3G systems or the so called Composite Radio Environments (CRE) (or even 4G systems), consist of multiple type radio access technologies, collaborating with each other, providing both diverse access alternatives and QoS improvement, especially as far as concerns protection against traffic congestion and loss of radio coverage situations. The merits deriving from beyond 3G systems interest not only network and service providers but also the mobile users. Additionally, the need of broad-band wireless access is directly associated with the intense demand for IP multimedia services (e.g. video streaming or high speed web browsing), mainly inside hot-spot areas. Taking into consideration the above described tendency in the area of wireless network systems, the IP-enabled DVB-T (the terrestrial specification of the Digital Video Broadcasting family) systems appear as an attractive alternative network access in the CRE context. Along this direction, this paper presents the most important aspects of a CRE network management system (NMS), focusing on the component responsible for the DVB-T resource management (RM). Finally, we implement and investigate through simulation a greedy algorithm suitable for DVB-T networks that performs fast resource management and configuration. We also provide some indicative results which prove that the algorithm demonstrates a close to optimal performance at the RM functionality.