Exploiting Reception Diversity in Adaptive Packet Scheduling over Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Networks

We propose a cross-layer optimization framework for multi-session broadcast/multicast (BC/MC) over multimedia network. The proposed framework seeks to perform simultaneous adaptations via intelligent co-operations between satellite gateway, terrestrial gap-fillers and respective BC/MC receivers to cope with highly vibrating satellite link, which is severely constrained by propagation delay, transponder power and channel bandwidth. By jointly optimizing multiple performance criteria across protocol stacks, the scheme mitigates the adverse impacts induced by queuing dynamics, channel variations and user diversities, thereby encompassing channel-dependant and network-friendly features. Meanwhile, it well accommodates return link diversity and the imperfect feedbacks, whilst ensuring fairness, scalability and robustness. We evaluate its performance over diverse network and media configurations in comparison with the state-of-the-art approaches. Numerical results show that simultaneous performance gains can be obtained on multiple essential performance metrics.