5G NR Multicast and Broadcast QoS Enhancement With Flexible Service Continuity Configuration

Abstract

Multicast and broadcast transmissions enhance the spectrum efficiency by delivering a single packet to multiple terminal users. The service continuity (SC) mechanism enables users to continue the service reception when the original transmission is not available anymore. For multicast and broadcast transmissions, the SC mechanism is different from that of unicast because of the different reception conditions. We design and analyze a set of SC mechanisms for New Radio (NR) multicast and broadcast transmissions (MBS) in this paper. The designed SC mechanisms do not require extra data-forwarding resources while meeting the interruption time requirements of diverse applications. To minimize the signalling overhead while meeting the latency requirements, we propose a dynamic SC configuration framework. With the framework, the network condition information is collected and the most suitable SC mechanism is chosen with its parameters. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed dynamic configuration framework outperforms the LTE eMBMS solution with up to 84.07% signaling overhead reduction, facilitating a more efficient multicast and broadcast system in NR.