This page summarizes the different integration and handover scenarios targeted by the project.

As explained in the previous pages, the "universe" of the MING-T project includes three mobile broadcast standards (T-DMB, DVB-H, DTMB), several mobile communcations systems (GSM, UMTS, WLAN, WiMAX), and covers a variety of services (mobile video, file download, electronic service guides, etc). It is obvious that the project cannot hope to cover all possible integration and handover issues in a two-year timespan. Instead, we will select a few representative scenarios which will be used to direct our research and prototype development.

After intensive discussions between all project partners, we finally decided on a set of eight use-cases. The full description and rationale for each scenario can be found in our project deliverable D1.1, Scenarios, requirements, and initial MING-T architecture. Besides the full description of each use-case, the report also explains the expected benefits for the involved actors including network-operators and end-users.

The following list summarizes our use-cases:

• Service discovery and description. One important advantage of digital broadcasting and TV over the previous analogue systems is the option to include metadata and service-information into the data-streams. We envision a very user-friendly Electronic Program Guide (EPG) that provides a common entry-point to the programs of all broadcast networks available within the current location. This will prove as an essential improvement over the current situation, where different EPGs are used on every single system.
• Watching a program via multiple networks. This use-case describes the situation where the same content (or programs) is available on multiple broadcast networks or mobile communication networks. Either the user can select the bearer network manually, or the terminal helps with this decision (e.g., based on network signal-strength).
• Protected mobile broadcast services. This scenario is basically the standard pay-per-view use-case. However, we can use the mobile communication uplink (or WLAN/WiMAX) during the interactive transaction and for the handshake of decryption keys.
• Video-on-Demand delivered via multiple networks. This use-case includes both live (on-line) and delayed (off-line) delivery of a selected video. Again, multiple networks can be used to transmit the actual video data.
• Mobile broadcast service with auxiliary data and interaction. This use-case concerns the delivery of auxiliary data together with the raw audio/video stream. Typical auxiliary data are subtitles or hypertext documents with in-depth information about the current video-stream. When such information becomes available, the terminal indicates this on its user-interface, and the user can then select to access the additional information. Again, we can use the mobile communication network to provide interactivity (e.g. voting, or shopping).
• Broadcast service for roaming mobile terminal. In this scenario, we try to ensure a continuous service even when the user is roaming and leaves the area covered by his home service.
• Scalable coding. As explained in the previous section of the project overview, we will exploit the hierarchical modulation mode of DVB-H together with state-of-the-art scalable-coding to provide a continuous transmission even under very adverse channel-conditions.
• Handover. In this use-case, we will demonstrate the handover between two broadcast networks, namely DVB-H and DTMB. Given that the same (or similar) content is provided on several networks, we will develop algorithms to manage the handover.