Future mobile networks need to fulfill stringent requirements on data rates, reliability, and availability. In order to satisfy these requirements, heterogeneous radio access technologies and deployments need to be used. To make efficient use of these technologies, multi-connectivity has been proposed to connect to multiple different technologies simultaneously. In this paper, we discuss different options to connect to multiple radio access points. Each of these options is further detailed, novel functionality required for multi-connectivity is introduced, and expected benefits are explained.

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Relaying is one of the proposed technologies for LTE-Advanced networks. In order to enable a flexible and reliable relaying support, the currently adopted architectural structure of LTE networks has to be modified. In this paper, we extend the LTE architecture to enable dynamic relaying, while maintaining backward compatibility with LTE Release 8 user equipments, and without limiting the flexibility and reliability expected from relaying. With dynamic relaying, relays can be associated with base stations on a need basis rather than in a fixed manner which is based only on initial radio planning. Proposals are also given on how to further improve a relay enhanced LTE network by enabling multiple interfaces between the relay nodes and their controlling base stations, which can possibly be based on technologies different from LTE, so that load balancing can be realized. This load balancing can be either between different base stations or even between different networks.

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