Local anchor scheme for reducing signaling costs in personalcommunications networks

A personal communications network (PCN) location tracking scheme called local anchoring is introduced which reduces the signalling cost as compared to the location management strategy proposed in the IS-41 standard. Local anchoring reduces the number of location registration messages between the home location register (HLR) and the visitor location registers (VLRs) in a way that location change is reported to a nearby VLR called the local anchor (LA) instead of to the HLR. This method successfully reduces the cost for location tracking when the call arrival rate is low relative to the mobility rate and the cost for location registration is high. A dynamic local anchoring mechanism is then introduced which dynamically selects the LA such that the expected cost for location registration and call delivery can be further reduced. It is demonstrated that the cost of dynamic local anchoring is always lower than or equal to that of the IS-41 scheme     

Group deregistration strategy for PCS networks

This letter proposes a novel deregistration strategy-group deregistration-for PCS networks. In the proposed strategy, instead of deregistering a mobile terminal (MT) right after the MT leaves its registration area (RA), the home location register (HLR) keeps the MT's identification in a list associated with the RA. When the next registration from the RA arrives, the HLR sends the MT identification list to the RA along with the registration acknowledgment message. The RA then deregisters these MTs. Compared to the conventional deregistration strategy, the proposed strategy greatly reduces both the signaling traffic and the database load     

Dynamic hierarchical database architecture for location managementin PCS networks

This paper introduces a dynamic hierarchical database architecture for location management in personal communications service (PCS) networks. The proposed scheme allows the dynamic adjustments of user location information distribution based on the mobility and calling patterns of the mobile terminals (MTs). A unique distribution strategy is determined for each MT, and location pointers are set up at selected remote locations which indicate the current location of the MTs. This method effectively reduces the signaling and database access overhead for location registration and call delivery. Besides, the required processing is handled by a distributed network of directory registers and centralized coordination is not necessary. The functions of the other network elements, such as the home location register (HLR) and the visitor location registers (VLRs), remain primarily unchanged. This greatly facilitates the deployment of this scheme in current PCS networks     

A batch‐update strategy for the distributed HLRs architecture in PCS networks

Owing to the increasing population of mobile subscribers, the rapidly expanding signaling traffic has become a challenge to the mobility management in PCS networks. Multiple database schemes to reduce signal traffic and to solve the bottleneck problem of the single home location register (HLR) architecture have been proposed by many researchers. However, in most of the multiple location databases or HLR systems, extra signaling is required for the multiple database updates. We propose a batch‐update strategy, instead of the immediate update method, for the location‐tracking schemes with replication to reduce the signaling overhead. In this paper, we first introduce a distributed HLRs architecture in which each HLR is associated with a localized set of VLRs and the location registrations and queries are processed locally. Then we propose our batch‐update strategy and present two pointing schemes for inter‐HLR call deliveries. The numerical result shows that our approach can effectively decrease the signaling cost of location registration and call delivery compared with the IS‐41 standard. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An intra-LA location update strategy for reducing paging cost

The blanket paging strategy in current mobile networks may waste a lot of wireless bandwidth. While keeping the standard location area (LA) based location update (LU) strategy unchanged, we propose an intra-LA LU scheme to reduce the paging cost. While a mobile terminal (MT) is residing in an LA with a cell called anchor cell, where the MT usually stays for a significant period, an intra-LA LU is performed whenever the MT changes its location between the anchor cell and the rest of cells in the LA. For an incoming call, either the anchor cell or the rest of cells in the LA is paged to locate the MT. Thus the paging cost is greatly reduced, especially when the called MT is located in its anchor cell.     

An integrated strategy for reducing location management cost

In this letter, an integrated location information management strategy is proposed for mobile networks, where local anchor and replica are deployed to efficiently manage the location information of a mobile terminal (MT) based on its call and mobility characteristics. As an MT's user is roaming within the local signal transfer point (LSTP) region serving the user's home or workplace, the MT's location change is reported to a local anchor (LA)-the visitor location register (VLR) associated with the user's home or workplace. Meanwhile, the LA's location is replicated at several switches (called the replicas) originating relatively high call rates to the MT. As a result, the MT's home location register (HLR) needs to be accessed only when the MT changes its LSTP region or an incoming call for the MT is generated by a nonreplica originating switch. This is shown to reduce location tracking costs.     

Location tracking with distributed HLR's and pointer forwarding

Location tracking operations in a personal communications service (PCS) network are expensive. A location tracking algorithm called pointer forwarding has been proposed to reduce the location update cost. The key observation behind forwarding is that if users change PCS registration areas (RAs) frequently, but receive calls relatively infrequently, it should be possible to avoid registrations at the home-location register (HLR) database by simply setting up a forwarding pointer from the previous visitor-location register (VLR). Calls to a given user will first query the user's HLR to determine the first VLR, which the user was registered at, and then follow a chain of forwarding pointers to the user's current VLR. To reduce the “find” cost in call delivery, the PCS provider may distribute HLR databases in the network. This paper integrates the concept of distributed HLRs with pointer forwarding, and the new scheme is referred to as the pointer forwarding with distributed HLR (PFDHLR). Since no registration to the HLR is performed in the pointer forwarding scheme when a user moves to the new locations, the cost of updating multiple HLRs is eliminated in PFDHLR. Our study indicates that PFDHLR may significantly reduce the mobility management cost compared with the single HLR approach     

带门槛的环形搜索移动性管理策略中移动台所 越过的位置区环数

位置管理或移动性管理是移动计算研究领域的一个具有挑战性的问题.我国及其他国家目前正在使用的个人通信网络如GSM、IS-41中,用两层数据库HLR/VLR支持位置管理.在这些网络中,每当移动台从一个位置区LA(Location area)移动到另一个位置区,其基本的位置管理策略(简称"基本策略")不管是否必要均立即进行位置更新操作,因而造成系统资源的极大浪费,降低了系统的性能.本文给出一种带门槛的环形搜索策略(简称"门槛环形策略")——将位置区分成环,设定一个门槛(整数),当移动台越过的位置区的环数没有达到门槛时,系统不进行位置更新操作,以减少位置管理的费用.在假定移动台的呼入是一个泊松过程,移动台在各个位置区的逗留时间是符合一般概率分布的随机变量的条件下,推导出在两次呼入之间移动台处于各位置区环的概率及移动台所越过的位置区环数公式,给出了"门槛环形策略"的位置管理费用小于"基本策略"的条件.     

A selective location update strategy for PCS users

A new location update strategy for personal communication services (PCS) networks and its implementation using a genetic algorithm are proposed. Most of the practical cellular mobile systems partition a geographical region into location areas (LAs) and users are made to update on entering a new LA. The main drawback of this scheme is that it does not consider the individual user mobility and call arrival patterns. Combining these factors with the LAbased approach, we propose an optimal update strategy which determines whether or not a user should update in each LA, and minimizes the average location management cost derived from a userspecific mobility model and call generation pattern. The location management cost optimization problem is also elegantly solved using a genetic algorithm. Detailed simulation experiments are conducted to capture the effects of mobility and callarrival patterns on the location update strategy. The conclusion from this work is that skipping location updates in certain LAs leads to the minimization of the overall location management cost for a user with a specific mobility pattern and even with moderately high call arrival rate.     

Performance analysis of cache strategy for signaling traffic management in a wireless ATM network

In a wireless ATM network for mobile multimedia services, conventional signaling protocols generate heavy traffic because the signaling load must be handled in a HLR (Home Location Register). This centralized structure of the wireless ATM network causes critical connection setup delays. Thus, distributed processing based on a reduction of the connection setup delays is needed in wireless ATM networks. A cache strategy for call delivery with cache updates of registration based on ATM multicasting is introduced with a comparison of the cost of cache scheme with the cost of a conventional scheme. Results show that the cache scheme has better performance than conventional methods when portable mobility is low with large traffic density. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Agent-Based Forwarding Strategies for Reducing Location Management Cost in Mobile Networks

An important issue in location management for dealing with user mobility in wireless networks is to reduce the cost associated with location updates and searches. The former operation occurs when a mobile user moves to a new location registration area and the network is being informed of the mobile user's current location; the latter operation occurs when there is a call for the mobile user and the network must deliver the call to the mobile user. In this paper, we propose and analyze a class of new agent-based forwarding schemes with the objective to reduce the location management cost in mobile wireless networks. We develop analytical models to compare the performance of the proposed schemes with existing location management schemes to demonstrate their feasibility and also to reveal conditions under which our proposed schemes are superior to existing ones. Our proposed schemes are particularly suitable for mobile networks with switches which can cover a large number of location registration areas.     

Two-level pointer forwarding strategy for location management in PCS networks

For a IPCS network to effectively deliver services to its mobile users, it must have an efficient way to keep track of the mobile users. The location management fulfills this task through location registration and paging. To reduce the signaling traffic, many schemes such as a local anchor (LA) scheme, per-user caching scheme and pointer forwarding scheme have been proposed in the past. In this paper, we present a new location management scheme which intends to mitigate the signaling traffic as well as reduce the tracking delay in the PCS systems. In this strategy, we choose a set of visitor location registers (VLRs) traversed by users as the mobility agents (MA), which form another level of management in order to make some registration signaling traffic localized. The idea is as follows: instead of always updating to the home location register (HLR), which would become the bottleneck otherwise, many location updates are carried out in the mobility agents. Thus, the two-level pointer forwarding scheme is designed to reduce the signaling traffic: pointers can be set up between VLRs as the traditional pointer forwarding scheme and can also be set up between MAs. The numerical results show that this strategy can significantly reduce the network signaling traffic for users with low CMR without increasing much of the call setup delay.     

LATS: a load-adaptive threshold scheme for tracking mobile users

Mobile user tracking is a major issue. We propose a novel approach for user tracking, in which the tracking activity is adapted to both user and system activity. The basic idea is to make the user-location update-rate dependent not only on the user activity (such as the call profile and mobility pattern). Rather, it is also made dependent on the signaling load, which reflects the actual cost of the update operation. Thus, at low-signaling load locations, the users are to transmit location update messages more frequently. To carry out this approach, we propose a load-adaptive threshold scheme (LATS): the network determines for each cell a registration threshold level (which depends on the cell load) and announces it, as a broadcast message, to the users. The user computes its own registration priority and then transmits a registration message only if its priority exceeds the announced threshold level. Thus, whenever the local load on the cell is low, the registration activity increases, while in loaded cells the registration activity decreases. Our analysis shows that the LATS reduces the paging cost, in comparison with other dynamic methods, without increasing the wireless cost of registration. Moreover, if higher user density is coupled with less mobility (e.g., consider vehicles), then the LATS strategy offers further performance improvement. The load-adaptive strategy can be used in addition to any other dynamic tracking strategy. Furthermore, the computational complexity imposed on the user is identical to that required by an equivalent load-insensitive scheme     

Effect of personal mobility management in mobile communication networks

Personal mobility (PM) is one of the key issues in realizing a personal communications service (PCS) in emerging third-generation mobile communication networks such as IMT-2000. It can be realized through the universal personal telecommunication (UPT) service. Two PM management schemes are proposed to manage PM information related to UPT users for incoming call (incall) registration/deregistration, incall registration reset by a mobile terminal (MT) owner, and incall delivery to UPT users in mobile communication networks based on the location information managed by the user's home network. The relative cost, i.e., the ratio of cost per unit time for supporting both terminal mobility (TM) and PM management to that of TM management, is derived, and the effect of PM management is analyzed from the aspects of update or query cost, signaling delivery cost, and processing cost. These results can be utilized in the implementation of PM management in IMT-2000.     

Group location tracking based on representative identity andvirtual VLR for transportation systems

A location tracking scheme known as group location tracking (GLT) is proposed to reduce the location update cost for terrestrial transportation systems (TSs) in personal communication networks. When a TS moves into a new registration area, the GLT scheme, based on a representative identity of the TS and a virtual visitor location register, updates location information by a group location update request message instead of individual location update of users. Compared with the IS-41, the GLT scheme significantly reduces signaling load     

A crossing-tier location update/paging scheme in hierarchical cellular networks

Location update/paging strategies have been widely studied in the traditional single-tier cellular networks. We propose and evaluate a novel crossing-tier location update/paging scheme that can be used in a hierarchical macrocell/microcell cellular network. Location update is proceeded only in the macrocell tier, where a location area (LA) is made up by larger macrocells. A mobile user will stay in such a LA for longer time. Therefore, the cost on location update can be reduced due to the decreased frequency of location update. To reduce the paging delay, the paged mobile user will be searched in the macrocell tier only when the paging load is not high. Otherwise, it will be searched in the microcell tier, where a sequential searching method is applied. The operation for the scheme is simple, as the macrocell/microcell cellular network has the advantage because a mobile user can receive a signal from both a microcell and the overlaid macrocell. Analytical models have been built for cost and delay evaluation. Numerical results show that, at relatively low cost, the crossing-tier scheme also achieves low paging delay.     

Hybrid Scheme with Adaptive Replication and Mobility Anchoring Point (MAP) in Wireless Networks

Replication strategy is mostly useful for replicating the mobile user’s profile at selected locations from which some callers have higher calling rate. Location management scheme also include replication strategy to reduce the location lookup cost of called mobile user. It plays important role in personal communication services in order to reduce call setup cost, call setup time, and increases the QoS (quality of service). In prior replication schemes, called user’s location profile is placed at some fixed and limited number of visitor location registers (VLRs) based on call history of the caller. In prior hybrid schemes location update and replication strategies are combined together. These prior hybrid schemes apply pointer forwarding strategy and replication. But these schemes have limitations like holding “loose” form of location profile and higher location update cost. We have proposed a new hybrid scheme which includes adaptive replication of updated user’s location profile and mobility anchoring point (MAP) for location update. The main objective of the proposed scheme is to reduce call setup cost and call setup time. In order to achieve the objective, adaptive replication is applied at certain visitor location registers (VLRs) according to movement of caller. The replica is kept updated at MAP and replicated to neighbor VLRs as per movement of the caller. We have presented fluid-flow based analytical modeling which shows that proposed scheme outperforms the prior hybrid scheme.     

Markov mobility model and registration area optimization in cellular networks

In cellular communication systems, in order for a network to keep track of inactive mobile stations (MSs), each inactive MS has to update its location from time to time, called location registration. To lighten the task of tracking inactive MSs, the network divides its cells into groups, called location areas (LAs) and tracks inactive MSs at the LA level: an inactive MS sends a registration message to the network to update its location only when it travels to a new LA. Obviously, the performance of a location area design depends on network traffic and the mobility of MSs. In the paper, we propose a general Markov mobility model for MSs in cellular networks, provide a procedure to automatically estimate the system parameters according to the network traffic, derive the performance of LA design, and provide a clustering algorithm to optimize LA designs. A numerical example is provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed procedures. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A user pattern learning strategy for managing users' mobility in UMTS networks

Third-generation mobile systems provide access to a wide range of services and enable mobile users to communicate regardless of their geographical location and their roaming characteristics. Due to the growing number of mobile users, global connectivity, and the small size of cells, one of the most critical issues regarding these networks is location management. In recent years, several strategies have been proposed to improve the performance of the location management procedure in 3G mobile networks. In this paper, we present a user pattern learning strategy (UPL) using neural networks to reduce the location update signaling cost by increasing the intelligence of the location procedure in UMTS. This strategy associates to each user a list of cells where she is likely to be with a given probability in each time interval. The implementation of this strategy has been subject to extensive tests. The results obtained confirm the efficiency of UPL in significantly reducing the costs of both location updates and call delivery procedures when compared to the UMTS standard and with other strategies well-known in the literature.     

Design and analysis of dynamic mobility tracking in wirelesspersonal communication networks

In personal communication networks (PCN), mobility tracking provides the function of locating a mobile user within the service area. We propose an intersection-oriented dynamic location update (LU) strategy, which is designed to minimize the cost of mobility tracking by optimally partitioning the service area into location registration (LR) areas on a per-user basis. A realistic mobility model is proposed in which we consider not only the mobility behavior of the individual subscriber, but also the street layout. Based on this model, a transient Markov process is developed to analyze the tracking cost. To reduce the implementation cost and to make the proposed strategy feasible, the concept of mobile subscriber (MS) grouping, and equivalent quadrangular LR area are also adopted