Technical Approach

C-MOBILE project is structured in 7 workpackages two of them dedicated to project management and dissemination and standardisation. The technical workpackages are:

WP2: Requirements and Business Models - in depth analysis of market, user and business requirements and development of innovative business models considering the interests of all involved players in the value chain.

WP3: Radio Access Network Enhancements – development of new RAN technologies for an efficient support of enhanced MBMS services allowing a commercially attractive implementation namely the ability to support the QoS requirements with a minimum consumption of radio resources.

WP4: Core Network Enhancements - investigate and define core network enhancements to support the performance, delivery and management of

future advanced multicast/broadcast applications and services. Key features to support subscriber feedback, group management, programme control & scheduling, media delivery, interfaces to multitechnology

core network entities and content providers and convergence of MBMS – IMS.

WP5: Applications and Content - the main goal is to design and produce content formats and adapt content management procedures within the

content provider domain and in-between content and mobile broadcast service provider domains.

WP6: Proof of Concepts - simulators will be used to evaluate the proposed enhancements as well as its feasibility. A testbed will also be setup to validate some of he new features.

Key Issues

C-MOBILE aims to develop new RAN technologies for an efficient support of enhanced MBMS services allowing a commercially attractive implementation,

namely high capacity radio technologies that might help improve MBMS support and to incorporate the new radio technologies into the long-term

evolution of UMTS. New topological approaches like multi-hop solutions and relaying allow the increase of coverage for high rate data transmission.

It is a major issue of C-MOBILE to understand how best to organise and schedule MBMS content from BM-SC (Broadcast Multicast Service Centre)through the Core Network and RAN to the user. Since the target traffic is multimedia, it is reasonable to expect that there will be interactions with the 3GPP IMS. C-MOBILE will investigate how to make this interaction explicit and to investigate how best MBMS can make use of capabilities provided by the IMS. Moreover, MBMS should evolve and integrate into a converged global multicast broadcast system, which will provide services across many multicastbroadcast bearers.

Interactive content formats for mass distribution do not exist today. C-MOBILE will develop interactive content formats for innovative MBMS services.

C-MOBILE will also research ways to use multicast technology to support personalized services. In particular the concept of Multicast

community (Community-created content where users are also contributors to the multicast service) is a particularly challenging issue. Such services may have pictures, clips and messages received from community members.

In particular considering the personalisation paradigm, the C-MOBILE project intends to research and analyse the technical and marketing/business aspects of using MBMS to support personalised services.

Expected Impact

The project will stimulate sustainable growth and maintain the competitiveness in the European Communications sector by enabling the

emergence of a new business area of mobile broadcast with promising business opportunities. Europe has a strong record on technology leadership in mobile communication and broadcasting. C-MOBILE brings together the

strength of these areas and contributes to the convergence of the mobile and the broadcast world, thus leading to new revenue opportunities and increased competition to the benefit of the user. The communications industry has long recognized the crucial role of standards in enabling interoperability, promoting competition, and securing investment. The consortium behind the project has both the determination and the possibility to impact standardisation. Several partners have leading roles in the most relevant standardisation and regulation bodies, such as 3GPP, ITU, OMA and IETF.

C-MOBILE will develop personalized (“Mybroadcast”) mobile broadcast techniques that will empower the user to be anytime anywhere informed and, in addition, to participate actively in the information society by integrating personalized broadcast in mobile communication systems providing interactive feedback channels.