Distributed Radio Link Control Protocol Facilitating Fast Cell Site Selection in an All-Ip Cellular Network

As mobile cellular networks evolve to carry both traditional voice and new data services, an all-IP based radio access network akin to the Internet is a favorable approach for future radio access networks. The main characteristic of such an architecture is that a lot of the radio network functionalities are distributed across the network and located in the base stations. In this paper, we propose a distributed radio link control protocol that allows a mobile to rapidly switch between base stations with minimal protocol overhead and required state information transfer. We present simulation results to demonstrate the expected throughput performance gains and investigate the impact of the transmission suspension time required to switch between base stations. Finally we present some evidence that the control traffic generated by the fast cell switching procedure is smooth, thereby simplifying the design of the backhaul network.