IMS-based IP Multicast Service Delivery over Satellite Network

This paper describes the issues related to IP multicast support in satellites networks. The IGMP multicast membership management protocol is considered as inappropriate for multicast group management over satellite network. In fact, IGMP leads to flooding, latency and scalability issues when used over asymmetric satellite networks. Thus, we propose a new architecture for multicast services provisioning based on IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) as a service delivery platform. The interworking between IP multicast protocol (i.e., IGMP) and IMS protocol (i.e., SIP) is demonstrated to overcome these multicast scalability issues inherent to satellite networks. Implementation and deployment of the proposed platform over an advanced satellite network emulator is also described.