Differentiated service delivery in cooperative IP-based broadcast and mobile telecommunications networks

Email: angelo.centonza{at}brunel.ac.uk Corresponding author. Email: thomas.owens{at}brunel.ac.uk Email: john.cosmas{at}brunel.ac.uk^¶ Email: y.h.song{at}brunel.ac.uk Received on 26 November 2005. Accepted on 20 March 2007. The evolution of wireless systems has led recently to the deploymentof cooperative network infrastructures where networks basedon different technologies cooperate together to offer innovativeservices which the networks individually could not offer. Cooperativenetwork infrastructures are hybrid systems. Examples of hybridsystems are already in use in areas as diverse power systemsand locomotion systems. It is very important to apply efficientsystem management techniques to hybrid systems that produceadvantageous business case scenarios for each participatingsystem and efficient use of the available resources. In thispaper, scenarios are investigated where cooperation betweenan integrated project (IP)-based broadcast network and an IP-basedmobile telecommunications network has the potential to allowservices to be provided to mobile users which would not be economicalto offer over either an IP-based broadcast network or an IP-basedmobile telecommunications network alone. The paper presentsa novel technique for determining which network to use to deliversuch services at a given point in time. The application of thistechnique in appropriate scenarios has the potential to generateadditional income for both the IP-based broadcast network operatorand the IP-based mobile telecommunications network operatorin an infrastructure where the operators cooperate to offerinnovative services. The paper explains the construction ofutility functions for cooperative IP-based broadcast and mobiletelecommunications networks. These utility functions are thenused to provide results that enable the efficiency of the managementof the network to be assessed in terms of the utility volumegenerated by the innovative services provided.