Real-Time Demonstration of Mobile Broadcasting Services via MBMS

MBMS (Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service) is a unidirectional point-to-multipoint (p-t-m) service which allows to transmit data from a single source entity to a group of mobile users in a certain coverage region. In order to investigate the performance of this IP datacast (IPDC) type of services over packet-switched cellular networks like UMTS or GPRS, a real-time MBMS system demonstrator has been developed jointly by Nomor Research, Siemens Networks GmbH, and Siemens AG. The unique setup covers most of the functionalities specified for the various MBMS network elements, as well as realistic channel models for the specified MBMS bearers. In addition, several advanced features are supported, including Application Layer Forward Error Correction (AL-FEC), system-internal switching between p-t-p and p-t-m radio bearers, and user-defined selection of different media services during operation. The whole setup is complemented by a streaming server and multiple PDA clients connected via IP to the simulator. Hence, realistic multimedia content can be broadcasted via the simulator in real-time, and the received quality at different mobile terminals can be visualized immediately for different system parameter settings and media contents. Besides its live demonstration capabilities, the presented platform can also be used as a valuable tool in research and development.