Service Continuity for eMBMS in

LTE/LTE-Advanced Network:
Standard Analysis and Supplement
Ngoc-Duy Nguyen and Christian Bonnet
Department of Mobile Communications
EURECOM
Sophia Antipolis, France
Email: [email protected]
Abstract Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service
(eMBMS) has recently attracted a great attention from the
telecommunication industry. All big companies in the field have
invested and intended to deploy eMBMS as the broadcast solution
in response to the immense demand in multimedia traffic.
The eMBMS, also known as LTE broadcast, can provide high
quality live video streaming services for a large number of
users simultaneously in an open area such as a stadium or
arena during an entertainment or sport event. Nowadays, in a
high mobility environment, maintaining the service reception for
moving users becomes a crucial task for mobile operators and
service providers. Unfortunately, the support from LTE standard
for eMBMS service continuity is very limited at the moment and
in many cases, the users cannot continue to receive their desired
services. To overcome the limitation in the standard, this paper
will present a novel method to ensure the service continuity as
well as to reduce the service interruption time during handover
period for eMBMS users in the mobility context.
Index Terms eMBMS, service continuity, handover, LTE,
LTE-Advanced.
I. INTRODUCTION
The parallel evolution of mobile technologies and devices
has allowed people to access high quality services with excellent
experience. According to the recent Cisco s report [9],
the global mobile data traffic grew 70 percent in 2012 (from
520 to 885 petabytes per month) and was nearly twelve times
greater than the total global Internet traffic in 2000. The report
pointed out video content is the biggest contribution to the
mobile traffic volume and has exceeded 50 percent of the
global mobile data traffic for the first time last year. A study
from Ericsson [10] states that the mobile traffic is expected to
continue increasing 12-fold by 2018. In the survey with US
consumers also done by Ericsson, 68 percent respondents said
they would watch more TV on their hand-held devices while
on move and these interesting services include local news,
weather information, movies, sitcoms and sports.
To meet the growing demand for mobile multimedia services,
the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has
defined the Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS)
[1] as a solution for delivery multimedia content to a large
number of users at the same time. Being built on top of 3GPP
cellular network, MBMS was first introduced in Universal
Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) standard and has
been updated to evolved-MBMS (eMBMS) in Long Term
Evolution (LTE) networks. With the improved performance
thanks to OFDM and single frequency network (SFN) in LTE,
eMBMS is now considered as the main competitor to the wellknown
Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) technology.
The ability of reusing the LTE cellular infrastructure for
broadcasting together with flexible and high data rates, has
persuaded many telecommunication companies to invest and
deploy eMBMS as an efficient and low-cost solution to deliver

multimedia content. Ericsson and Qualcomm, two of the

biggest telcos, demonstrated their evolved Multimedia Broadcast
Multicast Services at Mobile World Congress (MWC)
2012 in Barcelona with the scenario of a live-football-match in
a stadium area. Earlier this year, in the international Consumer
Electronics Show (CES 2013), Qualcomm Labs in conjunction
with Verizon Wireless and infrastructure provider Ericsson
have showed their first commercial demonstration of LTE
Broadcast eMBMS and announced plans to launch the services
in 2014.
The Australian operator Telstra has also announced plans
to expand its current LTE network coverage and deploy the
Ericsson s LTE Broadcast solution which is based on three of
the latest standards: HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding),
MPEG-DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) and
eMBMS. Alcatel-Lucent and 4G chipmaker Sequans Communications
have announced that their eMBMS solution has been
tested successfully. This robust eMBMS service which is based
on Alcatel-Lucents LTE infrastructure equipment and Sequans
eMBMS-capable LTE chipsets have worked well end-to-end
and is commercially viable.
In the Asian side, the largest telecommunications equipment
maker in the world, Huawei has launched its eMBMS innovation
center to develop eMBMS and introduced their end-to-end
solution to support broadcast video delivery in LTE networks.
The Korean company Samsung has also participated in the
video broadcasting market by cooperating with test-equipment
manufacturer, Anritsu, to demonstrate LTE broadcast with
intention to commercialize the service in the near future.
All the attention from the industry clearly shows that
eMBMS will become a key component in addressing the
exponential growth in mobile multimedia traffic. Therefore,
providing good eMBMS services would be the priority for the
mobile network operators who want to stay ahead in this huge
potential market.
One key feature of LTE network is supporting the seamless
mobility of users across the network, hence, service continuity
for user equipments (UE) that are using eMBMS while being
mobile plays an important role in maintaining service quality.
However, at this moment, the service continuity for LTE
broadcast is still very limited in the standard. The motivation
of this paper is to present the standard analysis and completed
techniques that ensure service continuity in eMBMS.
The rest of this paper is organized as follow: Section II
discusses the eMBMS services in a mobility environment,
Section III will analyze the current broadcast service continuity
in the 3GPP standard while our proposed methods to ensure
the continuity for eMBMS will be mentioned in Section IV,
finally the conclusion and discussion for future works are given
in section V.
II. EMBMS IN LTE AND MOBILITY ISSUE
MBMS over a Single Frequency Network (MBSFN) transmission
is a technique that allows multiple cells transmit
the same content using an identical waveform at the same
time. Cells participating in MBSFN transmission should be
synchronized tightly in time. To support MBSFN transmission
in a LTE system, the base stations are divided into different
groups depending on their location and the eMBMS services
that they are providing. In [1] and [4], new concepts listed
below are introduced to help us understand how eNBs are

organized for eMBMS transmission:

MBMS Service Area: The area within which data of
a specific MBMS session (or service) are sent. Each
individual MBMS session of an MBMS Service may be
sent to a different MBMS Service Area.
MBSFN Synchronization Area: an area where all eNodeBs
can be synchronized and perform MBSFN transmissions.
The MBSFN Synchronization Areas are independent
from the definition of MBMS Service Areas.
MBSFN Area: an MBSFN Area consists of a group
of cells within an MBSFN Synchronization Area of a
network, which are co-ordinated to achieve an MBSFN
Transmission. Except for the MBSFN Area Reserved
Cells, all cells within an MBSFN Area contribute to the
MBSFN Transmission and advertise its availability.
MBSFN Area Reserved Cell: A cell within a MBSFN
Area which does not contribute to the MBSFN Transmission.
It is worth noting that an MBSFN Synchronization Area
is capable of supporting more than one MBSFN Areas or
MBMS Service Area. Conversely, an MBMS Service Area
Fig. 1: MBSFN Area and eNB example
may include one or more MBSFN Synchronization Area or
MBSFN Area. The maximum size of a MBSFN Area can be
equal to the size of a MBSFN Synchronization Area. From
these definitions we can see that the ability of providing a
specific eMBMS service of a base station is decided by its
own type (normal or reserved cell) and by the group (MBSFN
Area) it belongs to. For that reason, when a mobile terminal
moves across base stations in the network, depending on the
services transmitted by the current eNB and the new one, the
user can either continue to receive the desired service or stop
getting it.
An example of eMBMS network configuration with several
MBSFN Areas and many LTE base stations is depicted in Fig.
1. In the figure, each cell is represented by a hexagon area and
the MBSFN Areas are eclipse areas in different colors. Cell
1 and 2 belong to MBSFN Area 1, cell 6, 7 and 8 are part
of MBSFN Area 2 and so on; Cell 3 and 10 are two MBSFN
Area reserved cells that do not participate in the eMBMS
transmission. There is an overlap between MBSFN Area 2
and 3, i.e. cell 6 belongs to these both MBSFN Areas.
Fig. 1 also shows possible scenarios when a LTE terminal
moves from one cell to a neighbor cell while receiving
eMBMS service. These scenarios can basically be classified
as follow:
Case 1: The UE is receiving an eMBMS service and moving
to an MBSFN Area reserved cell. This is the case
when a mobile device moves from cell 1 to cell 3.
Case 2: The UE moves to a target eNB which is in the
same MBSFN Area with serving eNB. The scenario
occurs when a UE is moving within MBSFN Area
1, from cell 1 moves to cell 2 or from cell 4 to cell
9 in MBSFN Area 4.
Case 3: The UE moves to a new eNB which does not belong
to the same MBSFN Area with the serving eNB. The
case happens when a terminal leaves MBSFN Area
1 to enter MBSFN Area 4 (cell 1 to cell 4).
Above are three basic mobility scenarios for an eMBMS
capable LTE terminal. Among these scenarios, the LTE standard
can only assure the service continuity for UE moving

(a) Handover procedure (b) Reselection procedure

Fig. 2: Service continuity in 3GPP standard Rel-10
within an MBSFN Area (case 2). Our proposed method will
address the solution for other cases. The scenario would be
more interesting and complicated if we take into account the
multi-frequency and/or Carrier Aggregation (CA) deployment
in LTE network, which will be discussed later in this paper.
III. EMBMS SERVICE CONTINUITY IN LTE STANDARD
In LTE network, a mobile entity is in either RRC-Connected
state or RRC-Idle state and it can receive eMBMS services in
both states. As a result, when studying the mobility of a user
who is utilizing eMBMS services, we usually consider two
situations: when that user is in the connected mode and when
it is in the idle mode.
A. 3GPP Specification Release 10 and before
According to the 3GPP release 10 (Rel-10) and previous
specifications, there is no specific mechanism supporting the
mobility for UEs that are receiving an eMBMS service [1].
That means the UEs in RRC-Idle state will perform reselection
procedure and in RRC-Connected state, they will follow the
normal handover procedure in unicast transmission. Also, no
new information is provided to help the UE in switching
reception between MBSFN Areas neither.
In connected mode, the mobile terminal detects, measures
the attributes of neighboring cells while moving and sends
measurement results to the serving cell. Based on these reports,
the serving cell will decide to make handover if necessary.
The source eNB shall trigger the procedure by sending a
Handover Request to the target eNB. If radio resources are
allocated, UE can connect to a new cell and listen to eMBMS
control information, which is conveyed in System Information
Block Type 13 (SIB13), in order to know the MBSFN Area
information. If the new cell is in the same MBSFN Area
with the old cell, UE continue to receive the eMBMS service
using the configuration in old cell. If they belong to different
MBSFN Areas, the UE has to listen to the MCCH message
which gives the detail information of a particular service (ID,
position of radio resource allocated for that service) in the
new cell. If the service that UE is receiving or interested
in, is available, then it will continue receiving eMBMS data,
otherwise, UE cannot receive MBMS data anymore. Fig.
2a describes the standard handover for the device receiving
eMBMS service while on move.
In idle mode, UE performs cell reselection to support the
mobility as given in Fig. 2b. During an eMBMS reception,
UE obtains the broadcast information from neighbor cells and
uses these information in evaluating process for cell reselection
decision. After choosing one eNB with the highest priority, UE
will camp to that eNB. Then, similar to the connected mode,
the UE it will check SIB13 and MCCH message in new cell
to receive the desired service if available.
We can realize that the service continuity can be surely
maintained only in the case where the source and target cell
are in the same MBSFN Area. With the other cases, there is
a possibility that the eMBMS service could be dropped. The
reason is the source eNB (or UE) decides to hand UE over
(or to camp to) a target eNB without knowing which eMBMS
services are available in that eNB. As a result, the chosen target
cell (may be the one with maximum signal strength among
neighbor cells) might not provide the eMBMS services that

UE is interested in.
B. 3GPP Specification Release 11
With the multi-frequency deployment in LTE network, eMBMS
services can be provided on more than one frequency.
In the latest 3GPP specification (Rel-11), supplements were
introduced to support the continuity of eMBMS by guiding
UEs to find their interested services on other frequencies.
Fig. 3: Service continuity supported in Rel-11
To avoid the need for LTE mobile devices to read the
eMBMS related information on neighboring frequencies in
SIB13 and MCCH message, the network informs UEs which
eMBMS services are provided on which frequency through a
combination of User Service Description (USD) and System
Information Block Type 15 (SIB15) [2]. In the USD, each
service will be associated with its own Service Identity which
is included in the Temporary Mobile Group Identity (TMGI),
the frequencies and the MBMS Service Area Identities (SAIs)
belong to the MBMS service area. The SIB15 has a list of
neighboring frequencies together with the current frequency.
Each frequency in the list contains a list of all SAIs supported
by that frequency. Combining the information in USD and
SIB15, the UE can determine which frequency provides the
eMBMS services it is receiving or interested in.
The information obtained from USD and SIB15 is very
important to the UE that is interested in receiving eMBMS
services. In the idle state, when a user is moving out of one
cell, it can prioritize to camp to the cells on the frequencies
providing its desired eMBMS service. In such way, the continuity
of eMBMS service will be maintained if at least one
neighbor frequency provides the service required by the UE.
In the connected mode, besides sending the measurement
reports like in unicast transmission, the UE who is receiving
or interested in eMBMS service will send one RRC message
to the serving cell as a response to the SIB15. This message
is named MBMS Interest Indicator and it consists of a list
of frequencies on which the UE is receiving or interested
to receive eMBMS services. In addition, this message also
contains one bit in order to indicate to the serving cell whether
the UE prefers eMBMS reception to normal unicast reception.
The current eNB will use this information in choosing the cell
to hand the UE over. The candidate cell on the frequency
providing the appropriate eMBMS services will be in first
priority and when the UE switch to this frequency, it can
continue to receive its interested service in the target cell.
The procedure to support the MBMS service continuity in
Rel-11 is depicted in Fig. 3. With this additional enhancement,
the service continuity support for eMBMS has been improved.
The UE can now camp or be handed over to the cell on the
frequency that transmits the service it wants. However, the
continuity of eMBMS service is still not assured completely.
For example, in the network where only one frequency is
deployed or in the case non of neighbor frequencies provide
the desired eMBMS service (but it is available in another
MBSFN Area), we will turn back to the situations previously
presented in Fig. 2. Our methods mentioned in next section
will complete the solution in the standard to ensure the
continuity for eMBMS in LTE networks.
IV. PROPOSED SOLUTION FOR SERVICE CONTINUITY IN
EMBMS
The idea of our method is taking the information of services

provided in the neighbor cells into account when choosing

candidates for handover or reselection procedure. Knowing
where the desired services are available will help the serving
eNB chooses the right target eNB to hand UE over or help the
terminal camp to a suitable cell. Although the idea is in general
similar to the LTE standard Rel-11, our method does have the
difference: we focus on the neighbor cells and their supporting
eMBMS services instead of the services transmitted on other
frequencies. Moreover, the proposed method will help the UE
to find the neighbor cells that have its interested services in
the same frequency with the current cell before searching on
the other frequencies.
In idle mode, the LTE terminal decides itself which cell it
should camp to when entering the overlap region among base
stations. From the SIB15, UE knows on which frequency its
desired services are available. But in the case there is only one
frequency deployed in the network or no frequency provides
the required services except the current one, the UE does not
know which cell it should choose. It then select the cell with
the highest signal strength and the eMBMS service continuity
is not guaranteed. We can see that the lack of information
about services supported by neighboring cells (on the same
Fig. 4: eMBMS Service Support Information
frequency with serving cell) in other MBSFN Areas may
cause the discontinuity. Therefore, the UE needs to obtain the
supported eMBMS service information of the neighbor cells.
To remind, the SIB13 broadcasted by one cell contains all
information about MBSFN Areas (MBSFN Area ID, location
of the corresponding MCCH message) that cell belongs to.
However, the list of eMBMS services in each MBSFN Area
and their actual position together with other information are
given in MCCH message. In our method, we propose that in
the SIB13, the base station should broadcast the list of all
eMBMS services (only the service ID or TMGI value [3])
supported by its MBSFN Areas as well as by its neighbor cell
on the same frequency layer.
The current cell can collect the eMBMS services supported
by its neighbor cells either from a network entity or directly
from the neighbors through X2 interface. The network entity
mentioned above can be the Multicell/Multicast Coordination
Entity (MCE) which is responsible for the admission control
and the allocation of the radio resources used by all eNBs in
the MBSFN Area. It also can be the Mobility Management
Entity (MME) in the core network.
After receiving this information from SIB13, the UE should
have a mapping among Cell identities, MBSFN Areas and
eMBMS services as shown in Fig. 4. Note that all services
listed are supported by neighbor cells on the same frequency
with the serving cell. This mapping will help UE choose the
appropriate cell to camp to. In case the UE cannot find its
interested service in all neighbor cells on current frequency, it
will search on neighboring frequencies using the SIB15 receive
from the primary cell similar to the standard method.
For the UE in connected mode, the mobility is supported
by network-controlled handover procedure, i.e. the serving
eNB will decide when and where to hand over the mobile
terminal. To ensure the eMBMS continuity, the serving cell
needs to know two things: i) the services supported by other
cells (referred as MBMS Service Support Information), ii)
Fig. 5: Cell reselection procedure in proposed method

the services UE is receiving or interested to receive (MBMS

Service Interest). For the first element, the current cell already
has according to the method we proposed earlier. The latter one
is still missing (the MBMS Interest Indication in the standard
[2] only gives the list of frequencies not services), therefore,
the UE should give it to the serving cell by means of a RRC
message. This message simply contains a list of services that
UE is receiving or interested in receiving and could be send to
the serving eNB together with the measurement reports when
an trigger event occurs or when the UE change its interest.
Using the MBMS Service Support Information together
with the MBMS Service Interest and the measurement reports
from UE, the source eNB can choose the eNB (on the same
frequency) providing the required service for UE. In the case
target eNB is in different MBSFN Area with the source, to
avoid the need to read the MCCH message in new eNB, the
MCCH message can be sent from target eNB to UE via source
eNB. This can be archived during the Handover preparation
phase when source eNB sends Handover Request to target eNB
and gets the Handover Request Acknowledgment. If the source
eNB informs the target eNB (e.g. by a flag bit), target eNB
could enclose the MCCH message in the response together
with necessary info for UE to connect to new cell. The MCCH
message will then be transferred to the UE by source eNB
before the handover procedure ends. By this way, right after
connecting to the target eNB, the UE can receive the MBMS
data, hence the interruption time can be reduced, giving a
better quality of experience for the user. If there is no neighbor
cell on the same frequency layer provide the desired service,
the serving cell will search on other frequencies as illustrated
in Fig. 6.
Fig. 6: Handover procedure in proposed method
To summarize, our method presented here is a supplement to
the standard for supporting the eMBMS service continuity in
LTE/LTE-Advanced network. All MBSFN Areas and frequencies
in the neighbor cells will be checked to find the candidates
providing the service UE is interested in. In case the user gets
in the non-MBMS area or reserved cell, the continuity can
be only maintained by changing to unicast transmission or
to another broadcast technologies. The detail mechanism to
buffering, transferring the data from broadcast to unicast or
other transmission is out of scope of this paper.
V. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
In this paper, we have presented and analyzed the service
continuity for eMBMS in the current LTE standard. Based on
the imperfection in the 3GPP specification Rel-11, we introduce
some improvement to supplement the existing eMBMS
service continuity mechanism. Our method together with the
standard helps to ensure the eMBMS reception for mobile
users while moving across different cells, through different
MBSFN Areas and on different frequencies. Furthermore, with
the UEs in RRC-Connected state, we suggest to transfer the
eMBMS-related information from source eNB to UE via Handover
Command message. If the UEs can get these information
during handover period, they do not need to collect them after
connecting to the new cell, thus the service interruption time
can be reduced and the service quality will be improved.
For the future research in this topic, we are now focusing on
two main directions. The first one is optimizing the procedure
of choosing the best candidate for the UE to connect to while

on move. In LTE-Advanced network where multi-frequency

and carrier aggregation can be deployed, a particular eMBMS
service can be diffused in many carrier components and/or
MBSFN Areas, therefore, the mobile terminal could have
many options to connect to when moving out of the current
cell. In our proposed method, cells working on the same
frequency with the serving cell have higher priority than those
on different frequencies. However, the candidate with highest
priority order might not give the best quality of service for the
eMBMS users. The quality perceived by the users during the
mobility can only be evaluated by using a simulation tool or
better with a real test-bed.
We have already implemented eMBMS in the OpenAirInterface
(OAI) platform [6] which can be used as a real-time
emulator or deployed in real RF test-bed for testing in real
environment. The performance of eMBMS system in OAI
platform with a basic scenario (one eNB and several UEs)
has met the requirement indicated by the 3GPP standard in
term of BLER and user throughput [5].
The other research direction is the ability of handover with
other broadcast technologies such as satellite or DVB in the
region where there is no cellular network available. From
user point of view, it can get the MBMS Service Support
Information of other technologies from current eNB similar to
the way presented in section IV with a small addition: in the
mapping show in Fig. 4, other broadcast technologies should
Fig. 7: Scenario for future study
be represented by special predefined values instead of normal
cell ID. From the network point of view, more research need
to be done in order to connect different technologies together.
An interesting example for future research is described in
Fig. 7. In this scenario, the LTE cellular network which has
two component carriers (different coverages) cooperates with
the satellite system to provide the same eMBMS services. The
Quality of Experience (QoE) metric can be used to decide
whether the mobile user should change to another MBSFN
Area, switch to neighbor component carrier or connect to
satellite system in order to maintain its eMBMS service with
the best performance.
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