A scheduling method for waiting time reduction in area-based broadcasting considering loading time

Due to the recent popularization of digital broadcasting systems, clients can watch several types of contents. In addition, area-based broadcasting, which uses the bandwidth that is not used in radio broadcasting, has attracted great attention. In area-based network environments, a server can deliver continuous media data such as audio and video in a limited area. Clients can get improved convenience by receiving such information as shopping coupons and community news based on their watching area using their own nodes. In area-based broadcasting, many clients watch content in the delivery area. Although servers can concurrently deliver data to many clients, they have to wait until their data are broadcast. To reduce waiting times, many studies employ the division-based broadcasting technique, which reduce waiting times by dividing the data into several segments and frequently broadcasting the precedent segments. These scheduling methods make a broadcast schedule that considers the situation in actual network environments. When the server makes a broadcast schedule in area-based broadcasting, it needs to consider both the loading times of the highlight and main scenes. In broadcasting, since the playing time of the commercial contents is predetermined, clients watch them during the loading time. Therefore, the server needs to make the broadcast schedule based on the consumption rate and the number of channels by setting both the loading times of the highlight and main scenes. In this paper, we propose a scheduling method that considers the loading time for area-based broadcasting. In our scheduling method, since the server makes a broadcast schedule using a different ratio of dividing the data for highlight and main scenes, the waiting time is reduced effectively.