Concurrently searching for mobile users in cellular networks

In today's systems, upon arrival of calls to mobile users, the system attempts to locate the users sequentially (one by one) through a paging operation. In this letter, we propose to concurrently search for a number of mobile users in a mobile network, significantly reducing the cost of locating mobile users. The reduction in the paging costs due to such a concurrent search can be quite substantial, depending on the knowledge of the probabilities of the users' locations, the number of cells in the network, and the number of mobiles to be located. Additionally, we propose a low-complexity heuristic that reduces the average paging cost by 25%, in the case of no knowledge of probabilities of the mobiles' locations. With such knowledge, further reduction in the average paging costs of up to 90% can be achieved.     

Tracking mobile users in wireless communications networks

Tracking strategies for mobile wireless networks are studied. A cellular architecture in which base stations that are interconnected by a wired network communicate with mobile units via wireless links is assumed. The cost of utilizing the wireless links for the actual tracking of mobile users is considered. A tracking strategy in which a subset of all base stations is selected and designed as reporting centers is proposed. Mobile users transmit update messages only upon entering cells of reporting centers, while every search for a mobile user is restricted to the vicinity of the reporting center to which the user last reported. It is shown that, for an arbitrary topology of the cellular network (represented by the mobility graph), finding an optimal set of reporting centers is an NP-complete problem. Optimal and near-optimal solutions for important special cases of the mobility graph are presented     

Analytical expressions for blocking and dropping probabilities for mobile streaming users in wireless cellular networks

We consider a wireless cellular network serving streaming traffic. We study in this context the effect of the users mobility on their quality of service (QoS). If the arrival of a new user violates the capacity constraint, then his call is blocked. If the user is first admitted but the capacity constraint is violated later when he attempts to move, then his call is dropped. The blocking and dropping probabilities are the main QoS indicators in this model called forced termination (FT). We introduce an alternative model, called transitions backtrack (TB), where a user backtracks when his motion violates the capacity constraint. In this model, a relevant QoS indicator is the number of times the user backtracks called number of motion blocking per call. We propose some explicit expressions for the above QoS indicators as functions of the mean user speed. These expressions are validated by simulations. In particular we observe that the dropping probability in the FT model is well approximated by the number of motion blocking per call in the TB model which is expressed analytically.     

Planning effective cellular mobile radio networks

This paper deals with the automatic selection and configuration of base station sites for mobile cellular networks. An optimization framework based on simulated annealing is used for site selection and for base-station configuration. Realistic path-loss estimates incorporating terrain data are used. The configuration of each base station involves selecting antenna type, power control, azimuth, and tilt. Results are presented for several design scenarios with between 250 and 750 candidate sites and show that the optimization framework can generate network designs with desired characteristics such as high area coverage and high traffic capacity. The work shows that cellular network design problems are tractable for realistic problem instances     

Dynamic resource allocation in mobile heterogeneous cellular networks

User mobility is a challenging issue in macro and femto cellular networks for the fifth-generation and newer mobile communications due to the time-varying interference and topology experienced. In this paper, we consider an OFDMA-based two-tier network with one macro cell and several femto cells, wherein each macro user and/or femto user can leave or enter its serving cell frequently, referred to as user mobility. A resource allocation problem with different rate requirements of mobile users is then formulated. Assuming well knowledge of the user locations and the channel state information, we propose a dynamic algorithm with static and dynamic parts for a better trade-of between computational complexity and system throughput. The static algorithm, named interference weighted cluster algorithm in this paper, is based on the graph theory to cluster the femtocells by minimizing the interference between clusters, while the dynamic algorithm is to deal with the user mobility by sharing the resource blocks under the constraints of rate requirements. Numerical results are demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed dynamic resource allocation algorithm in terms of capacity, computational time, and outage probability.

     

Handover and channel assignment in mobile cellular networks

A taxonomy of channel assignment strategies is provided, and the complexity in each cellular component is discussed. Various handover scenarios and the roles of the base station and the mobile switching center are considered. Prioritization schemes are discussed, and the required intelligence distribution among the network components is defined     

Location management strategies for cellular mobile networks

Location management in mobile communication systems is concerned with those network functions necessary to allow the users to be reached wherever they are in the network coverage area. The basic operations for that purpose-paging and location updating-are resource-consuming since both involve signalling over the radio link between the mobile stations and base stations. Future cellular mobile communication networks (wireless personal communication networks (PCN)) will have to support a large number of users, so a significant amount of radio signalling can be expected. This paper describes the conventional location management strategy (the one used in modern cellular systems like the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM)) and reviews, describes and comments on some alternative location management proposals for future high-density PCN environments that aim to reduce this expected high (radio) signalling load     

Modeling of customer retrial phenomenon in cellular mobile networks

In the planning of modern cellular mobile communication systems, the impact of customer behavior has to be carefully taken into account. Two models dealing with the call retrial phenomenon are presented. The first model considers a base station with a finite customer population and repeated attempts. A Markov chain modeling is proposed, and an efficient recursive solution of the state probabilities is presented. The second model focuses on the use of the guard channel concept to prioritize the handover traffic. Again, the retrial phenomenon plays an important role. The influence of the repeated attempt effect on the quality of service experienced by the mobile customers is discussed by means of numerical results     

Adaptive methods for location management in mobile cellular networks

Future mobile cellular networks will include complex algorithms and procedures that make them able to react optimally to the fluctuating conditions (propagation, traffic, services, ...). Among these mechanisms, location management is an important one as it deals with an essential function of the mobile cellular networks: locate each subscriber to provide him/her with the subscribed services. In this paper, we present the location management methods that are currently implemented in cellular networks and the adaptive methods that have been proposed for future mobile cellular networks. These methods are evaluated for different scenarios and their performance are compared by means of simulations.     

Performance of FH-MFSK cellular mobile radio in the presence of nonsynchronous users

Monte Carlo simulation of an FH-MFSK spread-spectrum cellular mobile radio system in the presence of nonsynchronous users is presented. Impairments such as short-term and shadow fading are introduced. Performance curves showing the number of simultaneous users the system can accept are given. Both clustering and no-clustering strategies are considered.     

Active tracking: Locating mobile users in personal communication service networks

The problem of tracking mobile users in Personal Communication Service (PCS) networks is discussed. We propose a novel approach for reducing the wireless cost of tracking users. The basic idea is to use nonutilized system resources for initiating queries about the location of mobile users, in addition to the process of user registration. Queries are applied at each cell, independently of the other cells, whenever the load on the local control channel drops below a predefined threshold. Our study focuses on two issues: (1) proposing the initiated queries approach and an algorithm for its application, and (2) studying and quantifying the value of location information and evaluating the parameters affecting it. Our analysis shows that the expected benefit due to location knowledge in a Markovian motion model depends, among other things, on the determinant of the transition matrix and on the variability of the location distribution function. The active tracking approach, as opposed to other dynamic strategies, does not require any modification of user equipment. The importance of this property is in its practicality: An implementation of a new registration strategy in current systems would require a modification of the users equipment. Moreover, the proposed method can be easily implemented in addition to any known tracking strategy, to reduce further the tracking cost. The performance of the active tracking method is evaluated under two registration strategies: The geographicbased strategy, currently used in cellular networks, and the profilebased strategy, suggested elsewhere. Under both strategies, it significantly reduces the tracking cost.     

Probabilistic location update for advanced cellular mobile networks

We propose a probabilistic location update (PLU) scheme for advanced cellular mobile networks. The performance of PLU is analyzed and compared with those of two extreme location update schemes. As a result, we demonstrate a merit of PLU, that is, simple implementation with an acceptable performance level     

State-dependent control of call arrivals in layered cellular mobile networks

Layered cellular mobile networks have been widely proposed as a way of accommodating traffic growth in mobile communications. There is a need, however, to give some form of priority to handover attempts over fresh call attempts to ensure that handovers are fast and reliable. A class of call control policies with state-dependent control of fresh call arrivals is considered for this purpose. A modified version of the Value Iteration Algorithm is used to solve a Markov decision model for the optimal call control policy. The network blocking performance under optimal state-dependent control is compared with the performance under a much simpler channel reservation policy for a model of a cellular sub-network. The channel reservation policy is shown to perform nearly as well as the optimal policy at lower loads, where fresh call blocking is less than 5%, indicating that it is both an effective and an efficient method for ensuring good handover performance.     

Iterative approximation analysis of guard-channel-based strategies in mobile cellular networks

A new mathematical method to analyse the performance of guard-channel-based strategies is proposed. The analysis is based on the iterative calculation of the average effective channel holding time. The method presented provides higher accuracy than alternative solutions previously reported in the literature     

A tabu search algorithm for routing optimization in mobile ad-hoc networks

In this paper, we propose a routing optimization algorithm to efficiently determine an optimal path from a source to a destination in mobile ad-hoc networks. To determine an optimal path for the nodes is important for transmitting data between nodes in densely deployed networks. In order to efficiently transmit data to its destination, the appropriate routing algorithms must be implemented in mobile ad-hoc networks. The proposed algorithm is designed by using a tabu search mechanism that is a representative meta-heuristic algorithm. The proposed tabu search algorithm carries out two neighborhood generating operations in order to determine an optimal path and minimize algorithm execution time. We compare the proposed tabu search algorithm with other meta-heuristic algorithms, which are the genetic algorithm and the simulated annealing, in terms of the routing cost and algorithm execution time. The comparison results show that the proposed tabu search algorithm outperforms the other algorithms and that it is suitable for adapting the routing optimization problem.     

Performance evaluation of different resource management strategies in mobile cellular networks

The foreseen mass diffusion of mobile communication services will require the identification of suitable resource management strategies to utilize efficiently the available spectrum. This paper refers to highmobility cellular systems and carries out a performance evaluation for different channel assignment techniques that belong to the following classes: Fixed Channel Allocation (FCA), or Dynamic Channel Allocation (DCA). Suitable handoff prioritization techniques have been considered to obtain a high quality of service; in particular, the queueing of handoff requests and the use of guard channels have been investigated. The resource management techniques have been compared in terms of the following parameters: the call blocking probability, the call dropping probability, the probability of unsuccessful call and the average number of channel rearrangements per call. The joint use of DCA, guard channels, queueing of handoff requests and channel rearrangements has shown promising results for the management of both new call attempts and handoff requests.     

Towards intelligent geographic load balancing for mobile cellular networks

We investigate a novel geographic load-balancing scheme for cellular networks that intelligently changes cellular coverage according to the geographic traffic distribution in real time. A cooperative negotiation approach for the real-time control of cellular network coverage is described. The performance of the whole cellular network is improved by contracting and shaping the antenna radiation pattern around a traffic "hot spot" and expanding adjacent cells coverage to fill in the coverage loss. By the use of real time cooperative negotiations between base stations and associated antennas, a near optimal local coverage agreement is reached in the context of the whole cellular network. Results showing the advantage of this technique are presented. Global optimization using constrained real-coded genetic algorithms (RCGA) provides a benchmark. Convergence using penalty functions to manage the constraints was first investigated but gave poor results. A transformation of the problem space is used to remove the constraints, and a criterion that is necessary for successful transformations is explained.     

Energy-efficient and delay-aware mobile cloud offloading over cellular networks

Telecommunication Systems - The latest mobile applications, such as GPS, games, virus scanning, and face detection and recognition, are compute-intensive applications consuming a lot of energy when...     

Performance analysis of fractional guard channel policies in mobile cellular networks

In this letter, recursive formulas for the new call blocking and handoff failure probabilities for Fractional Guard Channel (FGC) policies in cellular networks are derived. The effect of users' mobility on the maximum system capacity achieved with the Guard Channel (GC), the Limited Fractional Guard Channel (LFGC), and the Uniform Fractional Guard Channel (UFGC) strategies is then evaluated. Results show that maximum system capacity decreases exponentially as the mean cell dwell time decreases and that the relative capacity gain of each scheme depends on the mean cell dwell time. It was also found that LFGC outperforms GC and UFGC under any mobility condition.     

Performance analysis of cellular mobile communication networks supporting multimedia services

This paper illustrates the development of an analytical model for a communication network providing integrated services to a population of mobile users, and presents performance results to both validate the analytical approach, and assess the quality of the services offered to the end users. The analytical model is based on continuoustime multidimensional birth–death processes, and is focused on just one of the cells in the network. The cellular system is assumed to provide three classes of service: the basic voice service, a data service with bit rate higher than the voice service, and a multimedia service with one voice and one data component. In order to improve the overall network performance, some channels can be reserved to handovers, and multimedia calls that cannot complete a handover are decoupled, by transferring to the target cell only the voice component and suspending the data connection until a sufficient number of channels become free. Numerical results demonstrate the accuracy of the approximate model, as well as the effectiveness of the newly proposed multimedia call decoupling approach.