Power saving methods for MBMS transmissions in UTRAN

The demand for wireless multimedia communications thrives in todaypsilas consumer and corporate market. The need to evolve multimedia applications and services is at a critical point given the proliferation and integration of wireless systems. multimedia broadcast multicast services (MBMS) was introduced in third generation partnership project (3GPP) Release 6 in order to more efficiently use network and radio resources for the transmission of multimedia data, both in the core network and most importantly in the air interface of UTRAN (UMTS terrestrial radio access network). However, several obstacles, regarding the high power requirements, should be overcome for the realization of MBMS. The fact that Node Bpsilas transmission power is a limited resource and must be shared among all MBMS users in a cell indicates the need for power control during MBMS transmissions. Several techniques, such as dynamic power setting and macro diversity combining, have been proposed in order to reduce the power requirements of delivering multicast traffic to MBMS users. This paper examines the efficiency of the utilization of these power saving techniques, by presenting simulation results that will reveal the amount of power that is saved.