Efficient and flexible location management techniques for wireless communication systems

We consider the problem of managing the information required to locate users in a wireless communication system, with a focus on designing and evaluating location management techniques that are efficient, scalable, and flexible. The three key contributions of this paper are: (1) a family of location management techniques, HiPER (for Hierarchical ProfilE Replication), that efficiently provide life‐long (non‐geographic) numbering with fast location lookup; (2) Pleiades, a scalable event‐driven wireless system simulator with realistic calling and mobility patterns derived from several months of real traffic traces; and (3) multi‐day simulations comparing our proposed location management techniques with current and previously proposed techniques on a realistic geographical and network topology. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.