Performance Enhancement of Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) with Receive Diversity

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect of receive diversity on multimedia broadcast multicast service (MBMS) performance in wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) networks. In addition to time diversity provided by long interleaving and receive diversity provided by multiple receive antennas, 3GPP release 6 specifications for MBMS introduce two macro diversity schemes: soft and selective combining. Diversity techniques are introduced in order to improve the MBMS performance. Improvements help especially the cell edge MBMS users who suffer most from the fading channel conditions. As receive diversity is one of the most efficient diversity techniques this paper examines the system level performance of MBMS point-to-multipoint (p-t-m) mode with receive diversity together with and without macro diversity schemes. These concepts are studied with dynamic system level tool in which e.g. mobility of users and interactions of the radio resource management functionalities are explicitly taken into account. Our studies indicate that the receive diversity brings significant gains to the MBMS performance. Receive diversity together with macro diversity schemes improves the performance even more.