A Multimedia Streaming System for Urban Rail Environments

Due to a large number of mostly stationary users inside a train and the availability of a radio connection to the outside world, urban rail environments serve as promising candidates for multimedia distribution systems deployment. This work proposes to offload the individual per-passenger cellular network connections by using the excessive Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC) radio link bandwidth to deliver multimedia streams to a train, where it is subsequently distributed to the passengers using peer-to-peer based data distribution. Connections among the train passengers are implemented using the Wi-Fi Direct connectivity and data exchange is coordinated by using the Peer-to-Peer Streaming Peer Protocol. This work presents the solution and evaluates it in the scope of urban rail deployment. Network emulation tests are used to analyze the factors impacting the number of concurrent users that can use the proposed system. This work also proposes future work lines that can be used to improve the system's design.