Allocation of Access Slots to Mobile Stations in Order to Count the Number of Stations Interested in a Mbms (Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service)

摘要

A method of operating a radio network, such as UMTS or cdma2000, which comprises at least one primary station (PS), i.e. and access point or bare station, and a plurality of secondary stations (SSI, SS2, SS3), i.e. mobile stations. The primary station determines the level of interest of the users of the secondary stations in a particular service, such as Multimedia Broadcasting and Multicast Services (MBMS), by allocating a respective plurality of access slots in which the secondary stations can transmit an indication of its interest. The primary station receives the indications of interest to and estimates the level of interest from the number of transmitted indications, for example whether or not they exceed a threshold value. Depending on the result of the estimation process the primary station selects a particular one of at least two transmission modes for transmitting the service. According to said “approximation counting” of users interested in an MBMS service, the primary station selects a certain transmission mode for the implementation of the service (i.e. a point-to-point or a point-to-multipoint basis).