Transmission Power Saving Methods for Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Services in UMTS Networks

In current 3GPP R6 MBMS specifications, multimedia services are expected to be multicast/broadcast to all users or groups of users within the cell range. MBMS Counting Mechanism intends to analyse whether is more economic to transmit the multimedia services in a Point to Point (PtP) or Point to Multipoint (PtM) mode, evaluating in terms of radio resources management if it is preferable to use a single common channel reaching down the cell edge or single dedicated channels allocated to each user which conveys identical MBMS content. Macro Diversity Combining (MDC) is proposed as an enhancement for the MBMS standards, this method is proposed as a way to improve the received signal quality and at the same time increase the network coverage with considerable gains at radio resources availability.