A Power Based Algorithm for Efficient Radio Resource Management Policy in Integrated Terrestrial/HAP MBMS Systems

Focus of the present paper is the integration between high altitude platforms (HAPs) and terrestrial UMTS system to support multimedia broadcast/multicast services. HAPs are characterised by a wide coverage area, which makes them a very attractive solution to support broadcast and multicast applications, while increasing both resource capacity and grade of services. In the depicted scenario, we propose to enhance the system efficiency by envisaging a novel radio resource management (RRM) protocol based on the evaluation of the power consumption relevant to users belonging to each multicast group. We demonstrate that the use of the proposed RRM policy, coupled to a wise selection of transport channels, leads to the effective management of multiple multicast groups.