Robust Broadcasting of Media Content in Urban Environments

Abstract

In this work, the authors apply raptor codes to obtain a reliable broadcast system of non-time critical contents, such as multimedia advertisement and entertainment files, in urban environments. Vehicles in urban environments are characterized by a variable speed and by the fact that the propagation of the radio signal is constrained by the configuration of the city structure. Through real experiments, the authors demonstrate that raptor codes are the best option among the available Forward Error Correction techniques to achieve their purpose. Moreover, the system proposed uses traffic control techniques for classification and filtering of information. These techniques allow assigning different priorities to contents in order to receive firstly the most important ones from broadcasting antennas. In particular, as vehicle speed and/or distance from the broadcasting antenna increase, performance results highlight that these techniques are the only choice for a reliable data content delivery.