Cost-based resource management in hybrid cellular-broadcasting systems

This article introduces a cost based framework for the resource management in hybrid cellular-broadcasting systems with adaptive data rate. The considered service is delivery of multimedia items to the cache memory of user terminals. The problem investigated here is the minimization of the delivery cost per item, given that we have at our disposal a cellular and a broadcasting system. The proposed solution is to search for optimum set of users that are assigned to the broadcasting radio access and the respective data rate for serving them. The simulations performed on a test bed show that it is possible to achieve even four to five times reduction in cost per item if we employ both infrastructures, compared to a simpler strategy that assumes the transmission to only one of them. This significant gain justify the need for centralized resource management of the cellular and broadcasting systems. We have identified also situations when this gain is not significant, hence centralized management is not needed. Both situations are possible in realistic environments.