An Efficient Location Management by Optimal Location Area Partitioning in PCS Networks

Abstract

In PCS (personal communication systems) networks, location management deals with the problem of tracking down a mobile user. It involves two kinds of activ- ities: one is location updating and the other is paging [1]. Each cost for location updating and paging is significantly associated with each other and therefore, has a trade-off relationship to total signaling cost. Location management strategies, as implemented in current PCS networks and as presented in this literature, are based on spatially static location areas that are built by heuristics or aggregate statistics [1,2]. The static location areas are used identically for all mobile users, even though the mobility pattern and call arrival rate of each mobile user are diffierent spatially and temporally. Thus, the location management applied to same location areas for all mobile users suffers from the various mobile proper- ties of users. Consequently, these strategies can not efficiently reduce the total signaling cost.