Adaptive handover scheme for evolved multimedia broadcast multicast services in long‐term evolution networks

Abstract

The evolved multimedia broadcast multicast services (E-MBMS) can bring television (TV) services to a small mobile phone. The E-MBMS has been proposed in the third generation partnership project long-term evolution standardisation to support both normal mobile phone and mobile TV capabilities on a single device. As the E-MBMS delivers the same content simultaneously to multiple E-MBMS users sharing the same subframe in the multicast broadcast single frequency network (MBSFN) area and has the benefit of short handover latency when handover occurs within the MBSFN area; it is important to increase the number of E-MBMS users to be supported within the MBSFN area in order to achieve better performance in terms of spectral efficiency and handover latency. To obtain the advantages mentioned above, the proposed adaptive handover scheme increases the handover hysteresis margin (HM) when an E-MBMS user moves from the serving MBSFN area to the target non-MBSFN area and decreases the handover HM when an E-MBMS user travels from the serving non-MBSFN area to the target MBSFN area. Simulation results show that the spectral efficiency can be improved by increasing the number of E-MBMS users in the MBSFN area. Also, it is shown that the lower handover latency can be achieved by reducing the additional handover signalling message exchanges.