Patent ID: 8155098

Claim:
A method of communication and broadcasting in a cellular communication network of base stations and mobile stations, the method comprising: forming a plurality of frames of fixed time length, wherein each frame contains a plurality of time slots, and wherein each time slot contains a plurality of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols; forming a plurality of video frames and data frames in the plurality of frames, wherein: a video frame is a frame that contains air link resources used for broadcasting or multicasting content via a single frequency network (SFN), wherein the same broadcasting or multicasting content is transmitted by multiple base stations in multiple cells using OFDM and employing a same time and frequency resource; and a data frame is a frame that contains air link resources used for data unicasting without the use of a SFN; transmitting a video broadcasting stream in video bursts from a base station to a mobile station, wherein a video burst contains video frames carrying the content of the video broadcasting stream and data frames carrying unicasting data, and a video burst duration is substantially shorter than a time between two consecutive video bursts associated with the video broadcasting stream; and intermixing video frames and data frames within a video burst and configuring the video burst in accordance with a desired throughput or latency, wherein: the video burst configuration includes a number of video frames within the video burst, a number of data frames within the video burst, and an intermixing pattern of video frames and data frames; the video burst configuration is predetermined or reconfigurable in real-time; and the video burst configuration and scheduling information are announced to receiving mobile stations through a scheduling signal.