Multimedia services over mobile networks pose several challenges, such as the efficient management of radio resources or the latency induced by network delays and buffering requirements on the multimedia players. In Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks, the definition of multimedia broadcast services over a common radio channel addresses the shortage of radio resources but introduces the problem of network error recovery. In order to address network errors on LTE multimedia broadcast services, the current standards propose the combined use of forward error correction and unicast recovery techniques at the application level. This paper shows how to efficiently synchronize the broadcasting server and the multimedia players and how to reduce service latency by limiting the multimedia player buffer length. This is accomplished by analyzing the relation between the different parameters of the LTE multimedia broadcast service, the multimedia player buffer length, and service interruptions. A case study is simulated to confirm how the quality of the multimedia service is improved by applying our proposals.

翻译：多媒体服务在移动网络中面临诸多挑战，例如无线资源的有效管理，以及网络延迟和多媒体播放器缓冲需求所引发的延迟问题。在长期演进（LTE）网络中，通过公共无线信道定义多媒体广播服务虽能缓解无线资源短缺的困境，却引入了网络错误恢复的难题。针对LTE多媒体广播服务中的网络错误，现行标准提出在应用层联合使用前向纠错与单播恢复技术。本文展示了如何高效同步广播服务器与多媒体播放器，并通过限制多媒体播放器缓冲长度来降低服务延迟。这一目标通过分析LTE多媒体广播服务不同参数、多媒体播放器缓冲长度与服务中断之间的关系得以实现。最后通过案例仿真验证，证实所提方案能够显著提升多媒体服务质量。