Evaluation of the Multicast Mode of MBMS

Multicasting is an efficient way for delivering rich multimedia applications to large user groups as it allows the transmission of packets to multiple destinations using fewer network resources. Content and service providers are increasingly interested in supporting multicast communications over wireless networks and in particular over universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS). To this direction, the third Generation Partnership Project (3 GPP) is currently standardizing the multimedia broadcast/multicast service (MBMS) framework of UMTS. In this paper, we present an overview of the MBMS multicast mode of UMTS. We analytically present the multicast mode of the MBMS and analyze its performance in terms of packet delivery cost under various network topologies, cell environments and multicast users´ distributions. Furthermore, for the evaluation of the scheme, we consider different transport channels for the transmission of the data over the UTRAN interfaces and propose a cost based scheme for the efficient radio bearer selection that minimizes the packet delivery cost.