Downlink bicasting with Multiflow for Voice Services in HSPA networks

The latest 3GPP Rel-11 is characterized by a number of new features, where a few of them specifically address UE performance at the cell edge. In particular, the Rel-11 downlink Multiflow improves noticeably the cell edge performance as a UE receives simultaneously data from two neighboring cells. Even though Multiflow caters for the cell edge performance and increased data rates there, this feature can also ensure more robust reception of the voice CSoHS and VoHS packets at the cell edge in the heavily loaded scenarios. In this paper, we study and simulate voice services in conjunction with Multiflow, where we utilize the latter to bicast data from two neighboring Node Bs.