nternet Protocol TV (IPTV) is considered to be the next killer application. With two-way communication capability and point-to-point distribution, each viewer can choose individual programs flexibly and at lower cost. According to a study by the Multimedia Research Group, the number of IPTV subscribers will grow from 4.3 million in 2005 to an estimated 36.8 million by 2009, with a compound annual growth rate of 72 percent, and the IPTV service revenue will increase from $740 million in 2005 to $4.6 billion in 2009, with a compound annual growth rate of 56 percent. Telecommunications service providers are racing to provide IPTV/video on demand (VoD), voice, and data -the so called triple-play services.With fiber-to-the-x (FTTx), hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC), and state-of-the-art digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies, high quality TV programs can be delivered to the doorstep of IPTV subscribers. However, how broadband IPTV signals eventually reach displays in different places in the home is a vital, challenging problem.A broadband home network should be able to efficiently and effectively distribute IPTV traffic with a high level of user-perceived quality of service (QoS). Because rewiring the vast majority of existing houses with new wires such as Ethernet cables is prohibitively expensive, a better choice is to use "no-new-wires" and "no-wires" solutions. Competing communication technologies are emerging, using existing power line, phone line, coaxial cable, or wireless channels; for example, ultra wideband (UWB) -both wired and wireless -and IEEE 802.11n and millimeter-wave (mmWave) wireless technologies. They continue to reshape our vision of future broadband home networks.To enable ubiquitous IPTV services, wireless technologies play an important role. IPTV traffic can be distributed anywhere inside and even outside the home, using single hop or multihop wireless paths. Wireless devices can discover each other using wireless broadcast beacons and form mesh networks in a plug-and-play and distributed manner. Because of auto-configuration and self-organization, wireless mesh networks can be installed by users who lack technological expertise.According to the characteristics of different wireless technologies, we propose three different network architectures:• Homogeneous wireless-only mesh networks • Hierarchical heterogeneous wireless-only mesh networks • Combined wired and wireless mesh networks Wireless-only mesh networks and hierarchical heterogeneous wireless-only mesh networks do not have any prerequisites for current wiring in the home, so they can be deployed in existing or new homes. For heterogeneous wired and wireless mesh networks, when a wired link is available to form a reliable, high-data-rate backbone for the home network, we can use wireless technologies to further deliver IPTV traffic to the entire home ubiquitously.To compare different architectures, the admission region (the number of IPTV connections that can be supported simultaneously with QoS guarantees) is an important measure. The f...
