Patent ID: 9560566
Date: 2017-01-31
CPC Classifications: H04L,H04W

Claim:
1. A method of operating a Radio Network Controller (RNC) of a communication network during a soft handover process of a mobile terminal between a first base station (BS) and at least one second BS that are connected to the RNC, the method comprising: receiving, at a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol layer of the RNC, a first data frame stream from the first BS via a first data path and a second data frame stream from the at least one second BS via a second data path; determining a relative delay between data frames of the first data frame stream and the second data frame stream regarding their arrival at the RNC; merging, at the MAC protocol layer, the data frames of the first and the second data frame stream into a third data frame stream which is transmitted to a protocol layer above the MAC protocol layer; wherein the merging selectively comprises a reordering process of the data frames based on the relative delay; wherein, if the relative delay for a data frame exceeds a delay difference reference value, the data frame is transmitted from the MAC protocol layer to the protocol layer above the MAC protocol layer without subjecting the data frame to the reordering process.