An enhanced MBMS power control mechanism towards Long Term Evolution

Long Term Evolution (LTE) promises the delivery of rich multimedia services in a more power and spectral efficient way than its predecessor Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS). To this direction, the newly introduced Enhanced - Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (E-MBMS) framework is envisaged to play a fundamental role during the LTE standardization. E-MBMS constitutes the successor of MBMS which was introduced in the Release 6 of UMTS in order to deliver multimedia data from a single source entity to multiple destinations. This paper proposes a novel mechanism for efficient radio bearer selection during E-MBMS transmissions in LTE networks. The proposed mechanism is based on the concept of transport channels combination (point-to-point and/or point-to-multipoint radio bearers) in any cell/sector of the network in which multicast users are residing. The mechanism is evaluated through several realistic scenarios and is compared with several radio bearer selection mechanisms in order to highlight the enhancements that it provides.