by Simon R. Boehmer, Lead Solutions Architect Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group
At the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) 2024 in Amsterdam, Rohde & Schwarz (R&S) and Alibaba Cloud unveiled a Proof of Concept (PoC) demonstrating a groundbreaking 5G broadcasting approach. This PoC showcased the virtualization of the Rohde & Schwarz Broadcast Service and Control Center (BSCC), a software-defined core network solution designed to deliver multimedia content over 4G/5G networks in both broadcast and multicast modes. By containerizing the BSCC and deploying it on Alibaba Cloud infrastructure, the PoC highlighted how cloud-native solutions can enhance scalability, flexibility, and efficiency in multimedia content delivery, addressing key challenges in cost, adaptability, and performance.
This PoC comes at a pivotal moment for the broadcasting and telecommunications industry. As the demand for real-time, high-quality content delivery grows, traditional hardware-dependent workflows are increasingly challenged to meet global scalability needs. By embracing software-defined, cloud-native solutions like the BSCC, media providers can achieve the flexibility and efficiency required to thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape driven by 5G networks and edge computing.
The BSCC has traditionally been deployed as a hardware solution, but this approach encountered several limitations in scalability, cost, and adaptability. Media content would first undergo encoding and transcoding before being streamed through the BSCC hardware to end devices, as illustrated below:
While effective, this hardware-dependent setup posed challenges:
● Upfront Cost: Hardware procurement and configuration required capital expenditures.
● Deployment Complexity: Manual intervention was needed, making it difficult to replicate setups across multiple regions rapidly.
● Limited Adaptability: Changes to network demands required manual reconfiguration, leading to downtime.
The diagram above illustrates the sequential flow of media from encoding to end devices in the traditional BSCC setup. While reliable, this system lacked the flexibility to scale effectively and meet the demands of modern broadcasting. Virtualizing the BSCC on Alibaba Cloud addressed these challenges by transforming it into a software-defined, cloud-native service. This transition reduced operational costs by shifting investments from CapEx to OpEx and enabled rapid deployment across multiple regions, supporting diverse broadcasting needs with greater agility.
5G broadcasting introduces capabilities that set it apart from traditional WiFi-based transmission. While WiFi relies on localized networks and often struggles with congestion and limited bandwidth when multiple users access the same stream, 5G excels in efficiently delivering content over broad geographic areas using multicast and broadcast technologies.
From an end-user perspective, 5G broadcasting is particularly suited for live transmissions, such as sporting events or public broadcasts. It distributes the same content simultaneously to a large number of devices without requiring individual unicast connections or consuming personal mobile data plans. Furthermore, 5G ensures consistent performance in outdoor environments and high-mobility scenarios, such as users traveling in vehicles or trains. Its combination of wide coverage, low latency, and network efficiency positions 5G broadcasting as a transformative solution for real-time content delivery to mass audiences.
The PoC aimed to achieve three core objectives:
The PoC adopted a multi-region deployment strategy, leveraging both regional cloud and edge node resources on Alibaba Cloud to enhance the scalability, performance, and efficiency of the virtualized BSCC. This architecture supports high-volume regional content delivery while minimizing latency for real-time applications like live streaming and Video on Demand (VoD).
The BSCC was deployed uniformly across regional cloud infrastructure and edge nodes, with no functional differences between the setups. This ensured seamless operation regardless of deployment location. Key architectural components included:
● Elastic Compute Service (ECS) Instances: The BSCC was hosted on Alibaba Cloud ECS instances, provisioned automatically using Terraform to ensure consistent configurations across all instances. This minimized manual intervention and expedited setup.
● Dual Elastic Network Interfaces (ENIs): Each ECS instance featured two ENIs to manage separate input and output streams. The input ENI received incoming multimedia streams, while the output ENI handled processed content transmission to end devices or distribution networks. This design enabled traffic segregation, improved bandwidth utilization, and optimized performance.
● Security via Whitelisted IPs: To ensure secure connectivity, specific IPs from R&S’s transmitter network were whitelisted in Alibaba Cloud security groups. This added a layer of protection, ensuring only authorized systems accessed the BSCC.
The BSCC was also deployed on Alibaba Cloud edge nodes in Amsterdam, Paris, and Zurich to bring content closer to end-users. These edge deployments significantly reduced latency and improved real-time responsiveness, making them ideal for 5G-enabled applications like live streaming and VoD.
The diagram above demonstrates the end-to-end content flow facilitated by the virtualized BSCC. Media content was encoded and transcoded before being distributed through BSCC instances, which were consistently deployed across regional clouds (e.g., Frankfurt) and edge nodes (e.g., Amsterdam). The edge deployments offered reduced latency, which was crucial for real-time applications like live video streaming.
During the PoC, content source selection (regional cloud or edge node) was determined manually based on the event’s geographic location. For example, the Amsterdam edge node was used during IBC 2024 to demonstrate localized delivery with minimal latency to attendees. While this approach required manual switching, it effectively showcased the BSCC’s adaptability and operational consistency across diverse environments.
While manual content selection worked effectively for the PoC, future deployments could leverage Alibaba Cloud’s Global Traffic Manager (GTM) to automate and optimize traffic routing. GTM offers DNS-based traffic management that dynamically directs users to the most suitable resource, taking into account factors such as geographic proximity, real-time network latency, and ISP compatibility.
Key capabilities of GTM include:
● Health Monitoring: Continuous health checks ensure only fully operational resources are utilized, enhancing system reliability.
● Load Balancing Policies: Advanced algorithms, such as proximity-based routing and weighted traffic distribution, enable optimal resource utilization by dynamically balancing demand.
Integrating GTM into the BSCC architecture would elevate scalability, reliability, and user experience, allowing the system to adapt seamlessly to real-time network conditions and regional demand fluctuations.
Integrating the BSCC with R&S's Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and internal systems was a straightforward yet critical step in the PoC. R&S's IT team enabled communication by configuring their systems to accept traffic from the public Elastic IPs (EIPs) assigned to the ECS instances hosting the BSCC. Specific IP addresses from R&S's transmitter network and related DMZ systems were whitelisted in Alibaba Cloud security groups, ensuring only trusted systems could access the BSCC. This setup effectively secured the connection while facilitating efficient data exchange between the BSCC and R&S's transmitter network.
The primary protocol facilitating BSCC communication was the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). Although SCTP lacks inherent encryption features like TLS or IPsec, it provides robust mechanisms that ensure reliability and resilience, making it suitable for this application:
● Multi-streaming: Enables multiple independent streams within a single connection, reducing the risk of head-of-line blocking (delays caused when one blocked stream holds up others) and improving real-time data flow.
● Multi-homing: Allows multiple network paths between endpoints, maintaining connectivity even during partial network disruptions.
For this PoC, SCTP’s security depended on strict network configuration. By restricting access to a predefined set of public IPs and ports, the risk of unauthorized access was minimized. While this setup sufficed for the controlled PoC environment, production environments handling sensitive data would require additional safeguards, such as TLS encryption or VPN tunnels, to ensure confidentiality and integrity.
A notable challenge during integration involved identifying the precise port ranges required for SCTP communication. This was not due to SCTP’s design but rather a coordination effort with R&S’s IT team to determine and configure the necessary ports. SCTP's dynamic port allocation for features like multi-streaming required careful analysis to avoid overexposure while ensuring functionality. Once the port ranges were identified, they were opened on Alibaba Cloud to enable seamless communication.
To test and validate SCTP communication, the team used LKSCTP, an open-source implementation of SCTP for Linux systems. Tools like sctp_test simulated traffic, confirming robust end-to-end connectivity and the operational readiness of the BSCC's communication pathways for the PoC environment.
At IBC 2024, the live demonstration highlighted the virtualized BSCC's capability to deliver high-quality video content over 5G networks to specialized 5G-enabled devices. The demonstration emphasized three primary areas:
1. Manual Content Switching Between Regions and Nodes: Content delivery was manually switched between ECS instances in the Frankfurt region and the Amsterdam edge node. This required reconfiguring end-user devices to connect to specific IPs associated with the chosen deployment site. While not automated, this method effectively showcased the BSCC's adaptability to different geographic locations and network environments, ensuring uninterrupted content delivery tailored to specific regions.
2. Improved Latency for Real-Time Applications: The edge deployment of the BSCC significantly reduced latency for applications such as live video streaming. Observational feedback and on-site testing during the PoC revealed that edge-based content delivery closely mirrored the performance of on-premises BSCC hardware modules used in earlier IBC events. As Thomas Janner, Director of R&D Broadcast Applications at Rohde & Schwarz GmbH & Co. KG, noted:
“Streaming content from either the edge node or the Frankfurt region is so seamless and performant that it matches the quality of having the BSCC deployed locally as a hardware module next to the end devices, as we did during IBC 2023.”
This efficiency stands in stark contrast to traditional over-the-top (OTT) unicast streaming, where individual streams are delivered separately to each user over the internet. Such methods often suffer from significant delays during live events due to the processing and routing of multiple simultaneous streams, leading to increased latency, buffering, and inconsistent user experiences—particularly during high-demand situations like live sports or public broadcasts. By leveraging 5G multicast and broadcast capabilities, the BSCC delivered a single stream to all devices simultaneously. This approach eliminated network strain, reduced latency caused by unicast routing and processing delays, and ensured real-time, high-quality content delivery to large audiences.
The PoC demonstrated the ability of the BSCC to achieve ultra-low latency streaming, matching the immediacy and consistency of traditional broadcast systems while scaling effortlessly (efficiently supporting increasing numbers of users or devices without performance degradation) to meet the demands of modern, digital-first applications.
3. Robust and Secure Connectivity: Testing underscored the reliability of SCTP-based communication between the BSCC and R&S’s systems. Configurations included whitelisting specific IP addresses and securing ports within Alibaba Cloud, ensuring consistent and uninterrupted operation throughout the demonstration.
The PoC also drew attention during a keynote session at IBC 2024. Simon R. Boehmer (Senior Lead Solutions Architect, Alibaba Cloud Central EU Region) highlighted the scalability and reliability achieved through containerized BSCC deployments, emphasizing how cloud-native architectures eliminate the physical limitations of hardware-based systems. Wei Lu, PhD (Head of Global Operations, Alibaba Edge Cloud and Networking), underscored the role of edge computing in reducing latency and meeting the real-time demands of 5G broadcasting applications. Together, they outlined the broader implications of the deployment for the media industry, positioning it as a model for future innovation in broadcasting.
The virtualization of the BSCC on Alibaba Cloud demonstrated how cloud-native architectures address the challenges of traditional broadcasting workflows. This PoC directly tackled limitations such as hardware dependency, scalability barriers, and high operational complexity. By deploying BSCC as a virtualized service, the PoC showcased how modern cloud solutions enable flexible, cost-efficient, and scalable content delivery tailored to dynamic network demands.
Although focused on broadcasting, the PoC underscored the potential of virtualized, cloud-native systems in diverse fields. Applications range from eLearning and public safety communications to connected automotive services and venue casting, all of which benefit from a combination of cloud scalability, 5G connectivity, and edge computing. By efficiently integrating these technologies, this solution offers a framework for meeting the evolving requirements of global audiences.
The successful demonstration at IBC 2024 highlighted the technical capabilities of the virtualized BSCC and its broader industry implications. Beyond the technical achievements, the PoC provided valuable insights into how cloud-native systems can support high-performance, low-latency, and cost-efficient media workflows. Moving forward, continued collaboration between R&S and Alibaba Cloud could enable advanced capabilities, including AI-powered traffic optimization, predictive scaling, and enhanced edge infrastructure. These developments have the potential to further shape the broadcasting landscape, ensuring it remains aligned with the demands of the future.
The PoC conducted at IBC 2024 provided valuable insights into how cloud-native broadcasting solutions can address modern challenges and unlock new possibilities:
● Cost-efficient scalability: Virtualizing the BSCC on Alibaba Cloud enabled R&S to scale operations seamlessly across regions while reducing hardware dependencies and operational complexity, highlighting the cost advantages of cloud-based deployments.
● Low-latency 5G streaming: By leveraging edge nodes for content distribution, the PoC showcased how 5G networks can achieve ultra-low-latency streaming and efficient content delivery to mass audiences, meeting the demands of real-time applications.
● Innovative broadcasting workflows: The PoC established a pathway for future advancements, including AI-driven traffic optimization, predictive scaling, and enhanced integration of edge computing, paving the way for next-generation multimedia services.
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