Online Content Dissemination in Hybrid Broadcast-Unicast Networks

Abstract

There has been an explosion in wireless devices and mobile data traffic, and cellular network alone is unable to support such fast growing demand on data transmission. Therefore, it is reasonable to add another network to the cellular network to augment the capacity. In fact, the dilemma of cellular network is mainly caused by that the same content is repeatedly transmitted in the network, since many people are interested in the same content. A broadcast network, however, could mitigate this problem and save wireless bandwidth by delivering popular content to multiple clients simultaneously. This paper presents a content dissemination system that combines broadcast and cellular networks. Using the model of Markov Decision Process (MDP), we propose an online optimal scheme to maximize the expected number of clients receiving their interested content, which takes clients' interests and queuing length at broadcast and cellular base stations into full consideration. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed scheme effectively decreases item drop rate at base stations and enhances the average number of clients who receive their interested content.