Multiplexed harmonic broadcasting scheme for efficient video-on-demand services

Periodic broadcasting schemes can improve the efficiency of video-on-demand (VOD) services by reducing the bandwidth requirement to transmit popular videos. The harmonic broadcasting scheme has the best performance in reducing service bandwidth under a given access time, but it uses too many channels. However, a multiplexed harmonic broadcasting scheme that overcomes this drawback is now proposed. This scheme divides each video into equal-sized segments and then broadcasts segments periodically in a small number of sever channels with equal bandwidth. The idea of segment-to-channel mapping in the scheme is inspired by the time division multiplexing system. Each segment is divided equally into several subsegments; subsegments of different segments are multiplexed in a slot with the guarantee of being able to keep playing out continuously for every user. The proposed scheme outperforms the pagoda broadcasting and recursive frequency splitting schemes in reducing the viewers´ maximum waiting time, and the scheme requires less client storage