Infomobility Provision through MBMS/UMTS in Realistic Scenarios

New wireless communication technologies enable new services for infomobility. In this work we explore the feasibility of infomobility applications through multimedia broadcast multicast service (MBMS), a new feature added to the universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS). We assume to transmit, through MBMS channels, real time traffic information to all vehicles under coverage; such information will be exploited by on board smart navigation systems to update the best route to the destination. Activating this service, part of the base station (BS) power is wasted by MBMS, thus reducing resources available for typical UMTS traffic. In this paper, performance is investigated through simulations, adopting a complete simulation platform that we carefully developed taking into account, by means of an integrated approach, all network protocol layers and realistic road traffic with mobility models. Numerical results are provided by considering as reference scenario the medium-size Italian city of Bologna.