Network architecture and radio resource management for Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcast system

How to deliver rich multimedia content to mobile users in a resource-efficient manner is a great challenge to the communication society. The Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcast (SDMB) system has emerged as a promising solution on the efficient delivery of the Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) by implementing a satellite-based broadcast service to complement the 3G and beyond 3G terrestrial mobile cellular networks. The SDMB covers large parts of Europe by integrating both mobile networks and satellite networks. This paper presents a picture of the SDMB system focusing on its interworking and Radio Resource Management (RRM) issues and solutions. It first presents an overview of the SDMB, system; then the network architecture and interfaces for the interworking between the SDMB and the terrestrial network are specified. To support the interworking on the access layer, we define the SDMB access layer that closely follows the Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) air interface in order to achieve maximum commonality with the Terrestrial Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (T-UMTS). A proposed radio resource allocation algorithm on the access layer leads to the optimisation of radio resources.