Scheduling algorithms for the broadcast delivery of multimedia products

Abstract

Free bandwidth in television channels which is available in the form of the vertical blanking interval (VBI) is currently being utilized to broadcast programme information, HTML pages and closed captioning. This bandwidth can be used to broadcast data and also products like video clips, software, multimedia packages, etc. thereby satisfying several customers with a single transmission at very high speeds. We present several heuristic algorithms that attempt to maximize the revenue earned by an e-commerce merchant providing such a service. These algorithms are tailored to deal with different customer service policies.