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 (pointto-
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.