Power efficient radio bearer selection for MBMS users in soft handover status

Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (MBMS) has been introduced in Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 6 in order to address the need for efficient usage of the radio resources in multicast mode of UMTS. From the radio perspective, MBMS includes point-to-point (PTP) and point-to-multipoint (PTM) transmission modes. With PTP transmission mode one Dedicated channel (DCH) is established for each MBMS user within the cell. With PTM transmission mode one Forward Access Channel (FACH) is established covering a part of cells area and commonly shared by all the MBMS users within. In this paper we investigate the MBMS multicast mode under soft-handover condition in a cell and propose a mechanism that selects the transport radio bearer under soft-handover (SH) mode which reduces the Node B´s transmission power.