Facilitating method for handover of a mobile communication device

#The present invention relates to mobile telecommunications networks, particularly but not exclusively networks operating according to the 3GPP standards or equivalents or derivatives thereof. The present invention relates also to the management of data packets in the mobile telecommunications networks.

#In mobile telecommunications networks, there is a requirement for User Equipment (UE) to handover from one base station to another. In the 3GPP, there has been recently proposed a procedure defined in the control plane (C-plane) for handover (HO) from a source eNodeB to a target eNodeB. The various acronyms applicable to 3G communications will of course be familiar to those skilled in the art but a glossary is appended for the benefit of lay readers.

#Although for efficiency of understanding for those of skill in the art the invention will be described in detail the context of a 3G system, the principles of handover can be applied to other systems, e. g. other CDMA or wireless in which a mobile device or User Equipment (UE) communicates with one of several other devices (corresponding to eNodeB) with the corresponding elements of the system changed as required.

#Exemplary embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:

#FIG. 1 schematically illustrates a mobile telecommunication system of a type to which a first exemplary embodiment of this invention is applicable;

#FIG. 2 schematically illustrates a base station according to the first exemplary embodiment;

#Referring to FIGS. 1-5, a first exemplary embodiment of this invention will now be described.

#FIG. 1 schematically illustrates a mobile (cellular) telecommunication system 1 in which users of mobile telephones (MT) 3-0, 3-1, and 3-2 can communicate with other users (not shown) via a base station 5 and a telephone network 7. In this embodiment (that is, the first exemplary embodiment of this invention), the base station 5 uses an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) technique in which the data to be transmitted to the mobile telephones 3 is modulated onto a plurality of sub-carriers. Different sub-carriers are allocated to each mobile telephone 3 depending on the supported bandwidth of the mobile telephone 3 and the amount of data to be sent to the mobile telephone 3. In this embodiment, the base station 5 also allocates the sub-earners used to carry the data to the respective mobile telephones 3 in order to try to maintain a uniform distribution of the mobile telephones 3 operating across the base station's bandwidth.

#Base Station