An efficient robust header compression mechanism for Long Term Evolution Advanced relay architecture

3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) proposes relay architecture to extend the coverage and enhance the system capacity of Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A). In the relay architecture, the header compression mechanism called RObust Header Compression (ROHC) is introduced to eliminate packet overhead and provide better spectral efficiency for IP packet transmission over the radio. However, the ROHC mechanism specified in the relay architecture causes huge computation load. This paper proposes an efficient ROHC mechanism to improve the header compression performance in the relay architecture. A modeling study is performed to tune the parameters defined in the proposed mechanism to yield better performance. Our study suggests an efficient ROHC mechanism that decreases over 30% header computation load in comparison with the mechanism defined in the specification.