Integration of Ad-Hoc Networks with Infrastructured Systems for Multicast Services Provisioning

Focus of this paper is on an integration framework between UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) and Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANET), specifically designed to increase the effectiveness of cellular systems in supporting multicast transmissions. The aim is to overcome the scalability constrains of cellular network by enriching it through multi-hop communications. To the purpose of reducing the adverse impact of multicast transmission in the wireless cellular environment and to improve the system scalability, in this paper we propose a Radio Resource Management (RRM) policy based on a MBMS/MANET integrated architecture. The proposed solution has been successfully tested through a comprehensive simulation campaign. Obtained results make us confident that a welldesigned integration is a promising approach to overcome the UMTS (and beyond UMTS networks, as well) inadequacy in supporting multicast services efficiently.