Progressive Download for 3G Wireless Multicasting

This study focuses on the gain of using progressive download instead of legacy download for streamable media files for wireless multicasting networks. With progressive download, the media content can be played after some waiting time, while the downloading still continues in the background. We focus on 3GPP´s wireless multimedia broadcast multicast system (MBMS). First we provide a legacy MBMS download system optimized for waiting time to play the media. Then we provide a progressive MBMS download system to compare the gain in waiting time. Reliability is assumed to be provided with a FEC mechanism. We considered Reed Solomon and Raptor and finally provided comparisons of both FEC methods with regards to savings in waiting time for progressive download. The results encourage the usage of progressive download instead of legacy download mechanism where the data file is streamable, for improved user experience for 3G wireless multicasting systems.