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BACKGROUND

In the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) a general protocol reference model containing a 25 layered protocol stack is used for providing reliable commu nication of user data and signaling between the nodes of the network. UMTS also employs the concept of control-plane and user-plane, where the control-plane is a set of protocols used exclusively for control signaling purposes, while the 30 user-plane is used exclusively for user data transfer. A user-plane protocol stack in UTRAN according to the prior art is illustrated in FIG. 1. The figure illustrates the protocol stack of a User Equipment (UE) 100 communicating with a Serving Radio network Controller (SRNC) 110 and an 35 intermediate Node B 120. The Physical layer (PHY) 101,121 offers services to the Medium Access (MAC) layers via trans port channels, while the MAC layers (MAC efhs/d) 102,103, 111, 122, in turn, offers …