A Scheduling Method for Area-based Broadcasting Considering Loading Time

Due to the recent popularization of digital broadcasting systems, clients can have several types of watching contents. In addition, area-based broadcasting using the bandwidth that is not used in radio broadcasting has attracted great attention. In area-based network environment, the server can deliver continuous media data such as audio and video to clients in a limited area. In area-based broadcasting, since the server delivers data repeatedly, clients have to wait until their data are broadcast. To reduce the waiting time, many studies employ the division based broadcasting technique, which reduces waiting time by dividing the data into several segments and frequently broadcasting the precedent segments. When the server makes the broadcast schedule in area-based broadcasting, it needs to consider both loading times of highlight scene and main scene. In broadcasting, since playing time of the commercial contents is predetermined, the server needs to make the broadcast schedule according to the consumption rate and the number of channels by setting both loading times of the highlight scene and the main scene. In this paper, we propose a scheduling method considering loading time for area-based broadcasting. In our scheduling method, since the server makes the broadcast schedule using a different ratio of dividing data for the highlight scene and the main scene respectively, waiting time is reduced effectively.