Spectral efficiency of mobility-assisted podcasting in cellular networks

Abstract

We consider a wireless podcasting service for mobile users. That can be provided by mobile operators in their coverage areas. Our focus is on dense urban environments. The latency and throughput requirements of the podcasting service are flexible and, therefore, podcast contents do not need to be delivered to all users via the operator's network: they can be relayed from one user to another in a store-carry-and-forward fashion. Hence, mobility of users can be used as a supplementary transport mechanism to off-load the operator's network and relieve strain on scarce spectrum resources. In this paper, we evaluate the achievable throughputs and spectrum savings of the mobility-assisted wireless podcasting for various mobility patterns and user densities in an area.