When a large number of wireless devices are located in close proximity to each other, congestion will occur in the networks servicing these devices, and the effectiveness of these devices to receive data will be severely limited, limiting the functionality of these devices.
Network congestion is a common occurrence at largely attended events such as concerts and sporting events. The large number of mobile devices located in the confines of the venues for these events, coupled with the tendency of people to post pictures to social media while they are at these events, as well live stream the events from their mobile devices, requires bandwidth which exceeds what the cellular networks can provide.
Wireless network providers have created a number of strategies to alleviate the congestion issues at these heavily attended events, such as the deployment of mobile cell sites, rapid deployment units (RDUs), cells on wheels (COWs) and cells on truck (COTs). These types of devices help alleviate network congestion, but typically are more effective at providing functionality to lower bandwidth activities, such as texting and voice calls, than activities which require a larger amount of network bandwidth, such as transmitting photographs and live streaming.
Large venues which host these types of crowded events, such as stadiums, regularly can most effectively combat this network congestion through the installation of a WI-FI network at the venue which offers an alternative method of providing wireless data to mobile devices. However, even the most sophisticated WI-FI networks at these venues will have difficulty supporting live streaming data to or from thousands of mobile devices simultaneously.
The limitation of being able to live-stream presentations to mobile devices during largely attended events such as concerts, limits the ability of the presenter to communicate all media to the viewer that he may wish to.
During concerts, there may be media, such as music videos which are synchronized to the music, which could enhance the experience for the attender. At a large venue, such as an arena or stadium, this synchronized media could be presented via large screen viewing devices such as a jumbo Tron or the like.
Todays technology would enable this type of presentation through the transmission of a VHF or UHF transmitter, if the attendees had receivers for these types of transmissions. However, the typical mobile device used today, the smartphone, does not have VHF or UHF receivers incorporated into the device. If presenters wished to utilize this technology, they would need to provide attendees with devices which could receive this type of transmission, which would be costly to procure, and would likely lead to additional costs in damaged or stolen equipment.
However, with the current limitations on today's networks to simultaneously stream this much data to thousands of personal mobile devices simultaneously, this type of presentation is not feasible.
Thus, there exists a need for a method to provide synchronized media presentations on a multitude of personal mobile devices in large crowded areas where network congestion would otherwise prevent the transmission of these presentations to the attendees.
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