An enhanced approach for efficient MBMS handovers in 3G networks

With MBMS, a mobile terminal (MT) that is on the move and receive an MBMS service may have to handover from a common to a dedicated channel when crossing the cellpsilas edge. In previous work, we highlighted the possible inefficiencies which might arise if the existing 3GPP handover control approach is adopted to execute these types of handovers and proposed a specific MBMS handover control approach that compensated for them. This approach, although effective in terms of capacity and QoS, was not very viable. Thus in this paper, using a different approach, we enhance previous work in order to address its deficiencies and make the whole solution practical. The performance evaluation showed that our enhanced proposed approach even with the enhancements made simplifying the whole handover procedure, still outperforms the existing 3GPP handover control approach in terms of capacity and QoS efficiency.