Reducing and relieving the burden on the interface between base stations of a co-operating set of base stations

摘要

A mobile communications network for communicates data to and/or from one or more communications terminals. The mobile communications network comprises a core network part including infrastructure equipment, and a radio network part including a plurality of base stations which are configured to provide a wireless access interface for communicating the data to or from the communications terminals. One of the plurality of base stations is configured to operate as a serving base station to one of the communications terminals, to establish in co-operation with the communications terminal one or more communications bearers for communicating user data to or from the communications terminal via the core network part and the radio network part via the serving base station, and to co-operate with at least one other of the plurality of base stations to communicate the user data to or from the communications terminal. The co-operating base station is configured to receive user data for communicating to the communications terminal via an interface between the serving base station and the co-operating base station, and to transmit the user data selectively to the communications terminal consequent upon a state of a radio communications channel established via the wireless access interface under the control of the serving base station. The mobile communications network is configured to monitor a state of the radio communications channel between the co-operating base station and the communications terminal, and consequent upon predetermined conditions, to establish a communications bearer from the core network to the co-operating base station for communicating the user data to the co­operating base station for transmitting the user data to the communications terminal. Accordingly, a bandwidth requirement of the interface between the serving base station and the co-operating base station can be reduced.