A novel Virtual Hybrid ARQ mechanism for multi-cell MBMS transmission in wireless network

Multi-cell transmission in single frequency networks (SFN)area for MBMS can be used to improve the system performance. This paper proposes a novel virtual hybrid automatic repeat request (V-HARQ) mechanism for multi-cell MBMS transmission in the UMTS networks, by which multiple signals like the retransmission versions of HARQ mechanism in unicast mode from different cells can be received and combined at the receiver side. Moreover, NAK implosion problem can be resolved with the mechanism. By means of performance analysis and simulation results, a significant system throughput improvement coming from soft combining gains with tiny packet delivery delay practically is pointed out.