Content-specific broadcast cellular networks based on user demand prediction: A revenue perspective

The Long Term Evolution (LTE) broadcast is a promising solution to cope with exponentially increasing user traffic by broadcasting common user requests over the same frequency channels. In this paper, we propose a novel network framework provisioning broadcast and unicast services simultaneously. For each serving file to users, a cellular base station determines either to broadcast or unicast the file based on user demand prediction examining the file´s content specific characteristics such as: file size, delay tolerance, price sensitivity. In a network operator´s revenue maximization perspective while not inflicting any user payoff degradation, we jointly optimize resource allocation, pricing, and file scheduling. In accordance with the state of the art LTE specifications, the proposed network demonstrates up to 32% increase in revenue for a single cell and more than a 7-fold increase for a 7 cell coordinated LTE broadcast network, compared to the conventional unicast cellular networks.