A review of mobility management entity in LTE networks: Power consumption and signaling overhead

Mobility management (MM) in Long‐Term Evolution (LTE) networks is a vital process to keep an individual User Equipment (UE) connected while moving within the network coverage area. MM Entity (MME) is the LTE component responsible for tracking and paging procedures and controlling the corresponding signaling between the UE and its serving cell, which is necessary for data‐packet exchange. Because of the massive increase in the density of mobile UEs, MME is burdened by the high volume signaling load, especially because most of that load comes from Tracking Area Update (TAU) and Paging messages, which are essential to exchange UE‐specific information with the network. To achieve cost‐efficient resource provisioning, many solutions have been proposed for TAU and Paging management to optimize not only UE experience (ie, battery power consumption) but also network resources (ie, bandwidth). In this paper, we discuss various solution schemes for TAU and Paging in terms of complexity, latency, and computation costs. Also, this review discusses the adverse effects of these solutions on the LTE Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Furthermore, we present a new trend of MM solutions in LTE networks, called software‐defined network (SDN) and software‐defined virtualization (SDNV). To this end, we examine the existing schemes and challenges in the literature toward next‐generation wireless networks (eg, 5G, Internet‐of‐Things [IoT], and machine to machine [M2M] communications), and we describe user mobility models that are used to analyze the network performance.     

Optimal Sequential Paging in Cellular Wireless Networks

In a high-capacity cellular network with limited spectral resources, it is desirable to minimize the radio bandwidth costs associated with paging when locating mobile users. Sequential paging, in which cells in the coverage area are partitioned into groups and paged in a non-increasing order of user location probabilities, permits a reduction in the average radio costs of paging at the expense of greater delay in locating the users. We present a polynomial time algorithm for minimizing paging cost under the average delay constraint, a problem that has previously been considered intractable. We show the conditions under which cluster paging, a simple heuristic technique proposed for use with dynamic location update schemes, is optimal. We also present analytical results on the average delay and paging cost obtained with sequential paging, including tight bounds.     

Movement-based location update and selective paging for PCSnetworks

This paper introduces a mobility tracking mechanism that combines a movement-based location update policy with a selective paging scheme. Movement-based location update is selected for its simplicity. It does not require each mobile terminal to store information about the arrangement and the distance relationship of all cells. In fact, each mobile terminal only keeps a counter of the number of cells visited. A location update is performed when this counter exceeds a predefined threshold value. This scheme allows the dynamic selection of the movement threshold on a per-user basis. This is desirable as different users may have very different mobility patterns. Selective paging reduces the cost for locating a mobile terminal in the expense of an increase in the paging delay. We propose a selective paging scheme which significantly decreases the location tracking cost under a small increase in the allowable paging delay. We introduce an analytical model for the proposed location tracking mechanism which captures the mobility and the incoming call arrival patterns of each mobile terminal. Analytical results are provided to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of the proposed scheme under various parameters     

The Broadcast Storm Problem in a Mobile Ad Hoc Network

Broadcasting is a common operation in a network to resolve many issues. In a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) in particular, due to host mobility, such operations are expected to be executed more frequently (such as finding a route to a particular host, paging a particular host, and sending an alarm signal). Because radio signals are likely to overlap with others in a geographical area, a straightforward broadcasting by flooding is usually very costly and will result in serious redundancy, contention, and collision, to which we call the broadcast storm problem. In this paper, we identify this problem by showing how serious it is through analyses and simulations. We propose several schemes to reduce redundant rebroadcasts and differentiate timing of rebroadcasts to alleviate this problem. Simulation results are presented, which show different levels of improvement over the basic flooding approach.     

Terminal detach scenarios in future mobile telecommunications

In mobile telecommunications the network should monitor the terminal status, i.e.,switched on, switched off, busy. Once a mobile terminal is switched on, it automatically informs the network about its status (attachment action). However, regarding the way that the network can identify that a terminal is switched off (detachment), there are three alternatives: (a)Periodic detachment scenario. The terminal (when switched on) periodically informs the network about its state. If the network detects that there is no contact with the terminal for more than the agreed time period, it detaches the terminal, (b)Detach on unsuccessful paging. At the instance of a call terminating to a mobile terminal and after a number of unanswered paging messages, the terminal is detached. (c)Detachment action scenario. The moment that the mobile terminal is switched off, it informs the network about its status. Scenarios (a) and (c) claim that paging signaling savings can be achieved when the network is early informed that a mobile terminal is switched off. However, these scenarios require access to the network database, which is expected to be a bottleneck. On the other hand, scenario (b) requires no access to the database but does not guarantee paging signaling savings. In this paper we model the behavior of a terminal so as to compare the above scenarios in terms of performance. Note that paging signaling and database transactions are not the same cost.This paper was partially funded by the CEC through the RACE 2066 project MObile NETwork (MONET). The paper does not present the views of the project as a whole but those of the authors.     

Self‐optimizing neighbor cell list with dynamic threshold for handover purposes in networks with small cells

To select a proper target cell for handover of mobile users, signal level of cells in user's neighborhood is scanned by a user equipment (UE). Cells assumed to be scanned are included in the so‐called neighbor cell list (NCL). Conventionally, the NCL is managed according to the probability of handover of users to a target cell with fixed threshold. Nevertheless, the size of NCL could be significant if this approach is applied to networks with small cells. In this paper, we exploit knowledge of handover probability among cells derived from a handover history to reduce the amount of scanned cells. We introduce dynamic adaptation of the amount of cells to be scanned according to the quality of signal of a serving cell, measured by the UE. We also investigate impact of relation between the handover probability and the signal level to maximize efficiency of this approach. Further, the NCL management considering either summarized handover history of all UE or individual history of each user is compared in our evaluations. As the results show, both methods notably reduce the amount of cells to be scanned, while call drop rate and outage of the users are still negligible as in the conventional way. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive Resource Allocation for Uplink Carrier Aggregation Scheme in LTE‐A‐Type Networks

Carrier aggregation is an essential feature in the Long Term Evolution‐Advanced (LTE‐A) system, which allows the scalable expansion of the effective bandwidth to be delivered to user equipment (UE) through the concurrent use of radio resources across multiple component carriers (CCs). This system's optimal radio‐resource use has received much attention under simultaneous access (SA) scenarios for multiple CCs (m‐CCs). This letter establishes how many CCs a UE should simultaneously connect to maintain maximum uplink capacity. Under the m‐CC LTE‐A system, the spectral efficiency of the m‐CC SA scheme (m≥2) is compared with that of CC selection (CCS). Numerical results reveal that the 2‐CC SA scheme outperforms CCS and performs almost equally to the m‐CC SA scheme (m≥3).     

Intelligent paging strategies for third generation mobiletelecommunication systems

Location management procedures, in conjunction with the millions of users expected to subscribe to third generation mobile telecommunication systems, will generate a huge signaling load. In this paper, we propose a method which aims at the reduction of signaling overhead on the radio link produced by the paging procedure. The key idea is the application of a multiple step paging strategy which operates as follows: at the instance of a call terminating to a mobile user who roams within a certain location area, paging is initially performed in a portion of the location area (the paging area) that the so-called “paging related information” indicates. On no paging response, the mobile user is paged in the complementary portion of the location area-this phase can be completed in more than one (paging) step. Various “paging related information” elements (e.g. recent interaction information, high mobility flag, etc.) can be used and several “intelligent” paging strategies can be defined. Representative paging strategies are analyzed in terms of network performance and quality of service (paging signaling, paging delay, processing power requirements), via a simulation tool which models a realistic city area environment     

An Efficient Two‐Step Paging Strategy Using Base Station Paging Agents in Mobile Communication Networks

An effective paging strategy is essential for improving the utility of radio channels. This paper proposes a two‐step paging strategy which involves using base station paging agents to page a single cell at each paging. An analytical model is used to evaluate the performance of the proposed strategy. The proposed strategy is compared with the traditional simultaneous paging strategy and a recent proposal using the base station paging agents. The numerical results showed that the proposed strategy proficiently reduces paging cost on radio channels compared with other paging strategies.     

Routing for cognitive radio networks consisting of opportunistic links

Cognitive radio (CR) has been considered a key technology to enhance overall spectrum utilization by opportunistic transmissions in CR transmitter–receiver link(s). However, CRs must form a cognitive radio network (CRN) so that the messages can be forwarded from source to destination, on top of a number of opportunistic links from co‐existing multi‐radio systems. Unfortunately, appropriate routing in CRN of coexisting multi‐radio systems remains an open problem. We explore the fundamental behaviors of CR links to conclude three major challenges, and thus decompose general CRN into cognitive radio relay network (CRRN), CR uplink relay network, CR downlink relay network, and tunneling (or core) network. Due to extremely dynamic nature of CR links, traditional routing to maintain end‐to‐end routing table for ad hoc networks is not feasible. We locally build up one‐step forward table at each CR to proceed based on spectrum sensing to determine trend of paths from source to destination, while primary systems (PSs) follow original ways to forward packets like tunneling. From simulations over ad hoc with infrastructure network topology and random network topology, we demonstrate such simple routing concept known as CRN local on‐demand (CLOD) routing to be realistic at reasonable routing delay to route packets through. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design of near‐optimal local likelihood search‐based detection algorithm for coded large‐scale MU‐MIMO system

Massive multiuser multiple input multiple output (MU‐MIMO) system is aimed to improve throughput and spectral efficiency through a large number of antennas incorporated at the transmitter and/or receiver. However, the MU‐MIMO system usually suffers from interantenna interference (IAI) and multiuser interference (MUI). The IAI imposes due to closely spaced antennas at each user equipment (UE), and MUI is enforced when one user comes under the vicinity of another user in the same cellular network. Most of the previous literatures considered any one of these interferences. However, the present work proposes singular value decomposition (SVD) precoding‐assisted user‐level local likelihood ascent search (LLAS) algorithm to mitigate both IAI and MUI. In the uplink MU‐MIMO, the IAI is cancelled by SVD, and the residual MUI is mitigated by LLAS detection. The LLAS detection balances the trade‐off between the classical suboptimal likelihood ascent search (LAS) and optimal maximum likelihood (ML) detection techniques. The proposed LLAS performs local search among all 2M_T‐dimensional neighborhood vectors at each UE, where M_T represents number of transmitting antennas of each UE. Thus, its performance is near optimal, and its complexity is much lower than ML detector.     

Mobile user location update and paging under delay constraints

Wireless personal communication networks (PCNs) consist of a fixed wireline network and a large number of mobile terminals. These terminals are free to travel within the PCN coverage area without service interruption. Each terminal periodically reports its location to the network by a process calledlocation update. When a call for a specific terminal arrives, the network will determine the exact location of the destination terminal by a process calledterminal paging. This paper introduces a mobile user location management mechanism that incorporates a distance based location update scheme and a selective paging mechanism that satisfies predefined delay requirements. An analytical model is developed which captures the mobility and call arrival pattern of a terminal. Given the respective costs for location update and terminal paging, the average total location update and terminal paging cost is determined. An iterative algorithm is then used to determine the optimal location update threshold distance that results in the minimum cost. Analytical results are also obtained to demonstrate the relative cost incurred by the proposed mechanism under various delay requirements.     

A batch‐type time‐true ATM‐network simulator—design for parallel processing

This paper presents a new type of network simulator for simulating the call‐level operations of telecom networks and especially ATM networks. The simulator is a pure time‐true type as opposed to a call‐by‐call type simulator. It is also characterized as a batch‐type simulator. The entire simulation duration is divided into short time intervals of equal duration, t. During t, a batch processing of call origination or termination events is executed and the time‐points of these events are sorted. The number of sorting executions is drastically reduced compared to a call‐by‐call simulator, resulting in considerable timesaving. The proposed data structures of the simulator can be implemented by a general‐purpose programming language and are well fitted to parallel processing techniques for implementation on parallel computers, for further savings of execution time. We have first implemented the simulator in a sequential computer and then we have applied parallelization techniques to achieve its implementation on a parallel computer. In order to simplify the parallelization procedure, we dissociate the core simulation from the built‐in call‐level functions (e.g. bandwidth control or dynamic routing) of the network. The key point for a parallel implementation is to organize data by virtual paths (VPs) and distribute them among processors, which all execute the same set of instructions on this data. The performance of the proposed batch‐type, time‐true, ATM‐network simulator is compared with that of a call‐by‐call simulator to reveal its superiority in terms of sequential execution time (when both simulators run on conventional computers). Finally, a measure of the accuracy of the simulation results is given. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamic Location Management for Mobile Computing

This paper presents a dynamic and individualized location update scheme that considers each user's mobility patterns. The mobility patterns are used to create individualized location areas for each user. The proposed scheme is flexible and can be used in network with arbitrary cell topologies. The scheme, along with other existing schemes is simulated using realistic users' mobility and call arrival patterns, and network topology. The simulated environment consists of 90 cells representing the geographical area of the San Francisco bay, and 66,550 mobile users representing the typical classes of users that are normally present in a real cellular network. Results show the proposed scheme gives lower overall signaling costs, resulting in savings on the limited radio bandwidth that may have otherwise been used for location updates and paging.     

A Prioritized Real-Time Wireless Call Degradation Framework for Optimal Call Mix Selection

This paper describes a framework for selecting the optimal call mix to be admitted while employing a bandwidth degradation policy in a wireless cellular network. The optimal property is achieved by maximizing the revenue generated by different calls in a cell for the service provider. By degradation, we mean that: (1) some channels can be taken away from ongoing calls that are assigned multiple channels, and/or (2) newly admitted calls that require multiple channels get fewer than what they requested. To avoid removing more channels from calls than they could tolerate, we incorporate a new call attribute: the degradation tolerance, i.e., the number of channels a call can be degraded without sacrificing the acceptable level of quality. We also consider priorities over calls to influence the admission and/or degradation decision. Our analytical framework includes both static and dynamic scenarios. The dynamic case is enhanced with the ability to select the optimal call mix using incoming and departing handoffs, new calls, and call terminations in a recursive way, thus, resulting in a call admission policy. We also discuss how to accommodate non-real-time calls into our system. To evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme, a discrete event simulation tool has been developed that models our dynamic framework built on a customized simulated annealing optimization function. Simulation results demonstrate that not only does the proposed degradation framework maximize the total revenue generated by the admitted calls in the cells, but also reduce the handoff and new call blocking probabilities.     

An effective IPv4–IPv6 translation mechanism for SIP applications in next generation networks

In a next generation network, the IPv6‐enabled IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) network may connect to an IPv4 network. When an IPv4/IPv6 dual‐stack user equipment (UE) initiates a call by sending an IPv6 SIP INVITE message to an IPv4‐only user agent (UA), the call cannot be established correctly. To resolve this problem, the IMS‐application layer gateway solution, the redirect solution, and the interactive connectivity establishment solution have been proposed. In this paper, we propose an effective solution where only the IPv6 INVITE message is translated into an IPv4 INVITE message. Upon receipt of the IPv4 200 OK message replied from the IPv4‐only UA, the dual‐stack UE learns that the correspondent UA supports IPv4‐only and utilizes IPv4 instead of IPv6 to send the subsequent SIP messages and real‐time transport protocol (RTP) packets. The proposed solution is compared with the existing solutions in terms of network node modification, call setup complexity, and RTP transmission latency. Our study indicates that the proposed solution outperforms the other three solutions in the call setup and the RTP transmission. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A parallel shuffled paging strategy under delay bounds in wireless systems

In sequential paging schemes, the paging process is considered on per user basis. When an incoming call arrives to a mobile terminal (MT), the associated location area is divided into several paging areas (PAs) and PAs are paged one by one until the MT is found. Even though sequential paging algorithms can reduce the paging cost compared to the blanket-paging scheme, they introduce extra and unnecessary delay due to the fact that, during each paging cycle, unpaged cells are idle and unused in terms of paging. In this letter, a simple parallel shuffled paging strategy is proposed to reduce delay and improve performance. In the proposed scheme, multiple MTs can be paged in difference PAs in parallel. Our study shows that the proposed scheme outperforms both the sequential paging and the blanket paging in terms of discovery rate and queueing delay.     

An Efficient Paging Strategy Based on Paging Agents of Base Stations in Cellular Mobile Networks

We propose a new paging strategy to reduce paging cost by adding paging agents at base stations. When a mobile‐terminated call occurs, the base stations look up the paging agents to determine if terminal paging is actually to be made. An analytical model based on a Markov chain is used to evaluate the performance of the proposed strategy. The numerical results show that the proposed strategy significantly reduces the paging cost compared with the simultaneous paging strategy.     

Minimizing the average cost of paging and registration: A timer-based method

Methods of balancing call registration and paging are developed in this paper. Given that the probability distribution on the user location as a function of time is either known or can be calculated, previous work shows the existence of lower bounds on the average cost of paging. Here these bounds are used in conjunction with a Poisson incoming-call arrival model to formulate the paging/registration optimization problem in terms oftimeout parameters, _m ; the maximum amount of time to wait before registering given the last known location wasm. Timer-based methods, as opposed to location-based methods, do not require the user to record and process location information during the time between location updates. This feature might be desirable for minimizing mobile transceiver use during idle periods. We then consider uniform motion processes where a spatial translation of starting location produces an identical spatial translation of the associated time-varying probability distribution. This leads to a universal timeout parameter which may be readily calculated. We study and the minimum cost of paging/registration for a simple model of user motion and compare our results to an earlier method of location-based paging/registration cost minimization.     

Adaptive paging schemes for group calls in mobile broadband cellular systems

In this paper, we analyze the problem of efficient paging for group call searches under realistic mobility patterns. Taking as a basis a location update scheme, based on the definition of an adaptive macro‐location area, adapted to the mobility pattern of the terminals, we characterize the residence probabilities in each location area of a generic macro‐area. With this information, we propose and evaluate different sequential group paging strategies, also taking into account their computational cost. Results show the suitability of some of the proposals (semiadaptive and hybrid schemes) and its applicability to new packet‐based broadband cellular systems. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.