MBMS handover triggering depending on the soft combining possibility

摘要

A method is described for cell re-selection of a mobile terminal (40) in a cellular network (10) providing a multicast service. The cellular network comprises a first plurality of contiguous cells providing the multicast service on a point-to-multipoint channel, the soft-combining cell group, and a second plurality of cells providing the multicast service on a point-to-point channel. It is determined (320) if the best neighbouring intra-frequency cell of the mobile terminal is one of the cells of the soft-combining cell group. If this is the case, it is determined (330) if cell re-selection of the mobile terminal is needed based on a first criterion. If the best neighbouring cell is one of the remaining cells, it is determined (340) if cell re-selection of the mobile terminal is needed based on a second criterion. The second criterion results in a higher probability of cell re-selection than the first criterion.