Periodic attachment in future mobile telecommunications

In mobile telecommunications the network needs to monitor the terminal status, i.e., switched on, switched off, busy, idle. Once a mobile terminal is switched on, it automatically informs the network accordingly (attachment action). Regarding the way that the network identifies that a terminal is switched off (detachment), a procedure called periodic attachment is proposed: the terminal (when switched on) periodically reports to the network its active status. If the network detects silence for more than an agreed time period it considers the terminal switched off. Paging signalling savings can be achieved if the network is informed early that a mobile terminal is switched off. However, periodic attachment requires access to the network database system, which might cause a bottleneck. In this paper the performance characteristics of periodic attachment and the induced signalling load are evaluated as influenced by the selection of the time-out period. A constant time-out period for the whole day can cause a large amount of database transactions especially during low traffic hours. A method for dynamic time-out period selection to fit the varying conditions during the day is proposed and evaluated     

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.     

PCS mobility management using the reverse virtual call setupalgorithm

The increased demand for wireless mobile communications coupled with the finite available spectrum has motivated investigation into alternative methods of tracking users and delivering calls. We present a new scheme for delivering mobile terminated calls named reverse virtual call setup (RVC). Only a few new fixed network SS7 signaling messages are needed to implement this protocol; we specify them here. RVC can function within the existing cellular paging network or with an integrated overlaid paging network. The relative performance of RVC for both scenarios is investigated     

Paging area optimization based on interval estimation in wireless personal communication networks

We consider an optimum personal paging area configuration problem to improve the paging efficiency in PCS/cellular mobile networks. The approach is to set up the boundaries of a one-step paging area that contain the locations of a mobile user with a high probability and to adjust the boundaries to gain a coverage that is matched to the mobile user's time-varying mobility pattern. We formulate the problem as an interval estimation problem. The objective is to reduce the paging signaling cost by minimizing the size of the paging area constrained to certain confidence measure (probability of locating the user), based on a finite number of available location observations of the mobile user. Modeling user mobility as a Brownian motion with the drift stochastic process and by estimating the parameters of the location probability distribution of the mobility process, the effects of the mobility characteristics and the system design parameters on the optimum paging area are investigated. Results show: (1) the optimum paging area expands with the time elapsed after the last known location of the user; (2) it also increases with the length of a prediction interval and the location probability; (3) the relative change in the paging area size decreases with the increase in the number of location observations. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Paging area optimization based on interval estimation in wireless personal communication networks

We consider an optimum personal paging area configuration problem to improve the paging efficiency in PCS/cellular mobile networks. The approach is to set up the boundaries of a one-step paging area that contain the locations of a mobile user with a high probability and to adjust the boundaries to gain a coverage that is matched to the mobile user's time-varying mobility pattern. We formulate the problem as an interval estimation problem. The objective is to reduce the paging signaling cost by minimizing the size of the paging area constrained to certain confidence measure (probability of locating the user), based on a finite number of available location observations of the mobile user. Modeling user mobility as a Brownian motion with the drift stochastic process and by estimating the parameters of the location probability distribution of the mobility process, the effects of the mobility characteristics and the system design parameters on the optimum paging area are investigated. Results show: (1) the optimum paging area expands with the time elapsed after the last known location of the user; (2) it also increases with the length of a prediction interval and the location probability; (3) the relative change in the paging area size decreases with the increase in the number of location observations. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Overview of the GSM system and protocol architecture

The global system for mobile telecommunications (GSM), which provides terminal mobility, with personal mobility provided through the insertion of a subscriber identity module (SIM) into the GSM network, is discussed. Cellular mobile communications, the cellular network infrastructure, and the specification of network databases and standards are described. The GSMs, numbering plan, radio channel structure, mobility management, call routing and signaling, protocol layering architecture, signaling transport protocols, and paging messaging systems are also described     

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     

A Combination of Optimal Partitioning and Location Prediction to Assist Paging in Mobile Cellular Networks

The correlated both in space and time user mobility behavior can aid significantly in the localization of a moving terminal in the network coverage area. However, there is always some uncertainty in mobile user position and a network-wide search cannot be done. Therefore, a predictive paging scheme must always be combined with a location update strategy and a compatible algorithm to conduct the search. In this paper, we introduce a new strategy that combines an optimal partitioning of the location area (LA) with a model to predict user movements, based on the additional information of the cell where the last interaction between the network and the terminal took place. We study the performance of the strategy under delay bounds and different mobility and call arrival characteristics. It is found that the new scheme further minimizes signaling costs and enhances previous sequential paging algorithms.     

Performance bounds of a multiple-step paging strategy in future universal mobile telecommunication systems

In future mobile telecommunications, due to the huge number of users and the specific functions that support mobility, a significant amount of signaling load will have to be carried by the finite capacity of the radio link. Hence, methods aiming at radio link signaling load reduction are welcome. In this paper we propose and analyze a method that saves paging signaling load by exploiting information related to the terminal location during the most recent interaction between the terminal and the network. The penalty paid is extra processing power and extra paging delays. An analytical model is developed so as to describe the performance versus traffic intensity and mobility conditions. The performance of the proposed paging scheme is investigated, and it is shown that the method operates well even in the worst case, which is the high user mobility conditions. Possible extensions of the method, which exploit information related to the mobility degree of each individual user or information characterizing the mobility conditions in a certain location area, are also proposed.This paper has been partially funded by CEC through the RACE 2066 Mobile Network (MONET) project. The paper does not present the views of the project as a whole, but those of the authors.     

A cost effective distributed location management strategy for wireless networks

The mobility feature of mobile stations (MSs) imposes a large burden on network traffic control as a result of location management. Design issues of location management include MS registration (updating) and call setup (paging). Previous approaches introduced several network topologies for updating and paging procedures, but most of them focused on a single problem: either updating optimization or paging optimization. In this paper, we design and integrate two mechanisms, distributed temporary location caches (TLCs) and distributed home location registers (HLRs), to reduce database access delay and to decrease network signaling traffic in both updating and paging for low power, low tier micro cellular systems. By using TLCs, our approach can improve the performance of updating and paging in comparison with previous approaches. Experimental results based on our analytic model show that our location management procedures have lower HLR access rate, lower registration cost, and lower call setup cost than other approaches.     

A comparison of different paging mechanisms for mobile IP

This paper proposes two Individual paging schemes, then presents a comparative analysis on the signaling cost functions of Mobile IP (MIP) with different paging protocols and paging schemes and investigates constructing optimal paging areas using discrete system model as a mobility model. In wireless mobile Internet, mobile hosts often visit foreign networks that might be far away from their home networks and the occurrences of their inter-domain movement are relatively rare. In this scenario, our analytical results show that paging, particularly individual paging, can significantly improve the total signaling cost of MIP. We show that Domain paging can bring about considerable cost saving compared to FA (Foreign Agent) paging. Our results also demonstrate the significant advantages of Individual Paging over Static Aggregate Paging. The results show that specifying the optimal paging area size is critical in saving signaling cost of MIP with paging support. Hung Tuan Do received the B.E. degree in Electrical Engineeing and Computer Science from Hanoi University of Technology, Vietnam, and the M.E. and the Ph.D. both from Gunma University, Japan. His research interests include Mobility Management, Wireless Internet and Mobile Ad hoc Networks. Yoshikuni Onozato is a Professor with Gunma University. His research interests are in satellite systems, computer communication networks and distributed computing systems and span the entire spectrum from the design and performance evaluation of these systems to their implementation. He is a member of IEEE, ACM, IPSJ, ORSJ and IEICE.     

Information-Theory Based Optimal Location Management Schemes for Integrated Multi-System Wireless Networks

In a multisystem environment where a mobile node can utilize multiple interfaces and simultaneously connect to multiple providers, new opportunities exist for efficient location management strategies spanning heterogeneous cellular wireless networks. In this paper, an integrated framework is developed for location management in such a multi-system, fourth generation (4 G) wireless networks. This information-theoretic framework allows each individual sub-system to operate fairly independently, and does not require the knowledge of individual sub-network topologies. An efficient location management in such a loosely coupled network is designed by having a mobile node view its movement as a vector-valued sequence, and then transmit this sequence in an entropy coded form to the network. We demonstrate how an intelligent, integrated paging strategy must consider the joint residence probability distribution of a mobile node in multiple sub-networks. We prove that the determination of an optimal paging sequence is NP-complete, and also propose an efficient greedy heuristic to compute the paging sequence, both without and with bounds on the paging delay. Three different location tracking strategies are proposed and evaluated; they differ in their degrees of centralized control and provide tradeoff between the location update and paging costs. Simulation experiments demonstrate that our proposed schemes can result in more than 50% savings in both update and paging costs, in comparison with the basic movement-based, multi-system location management strategy.     

低轨卫星系统中结合时间和移动的位置更新策略

低轨(LEO)卫星快速运动,移动终端(MT)相对于卫星的位置信息也在不断变化,如何有效地管理MT的位置信息,减小位置更新频率和寻呼开销是研究位置管理的主要目的。为此,提出一种低轨卫星系统中的动态位置管理策略,基于时间和移动相结合进行位置更新,在不增加寻呼开销的条件下,减小了位置更新频率,从而有效降低了位置管理的总开销。     

Land mobile satellite systems

The general advantages and potential operating characteristics of the mobile satellite service (MSS) are described, and distinctions are made between radio telephone, which is interconnected to the public switched telephone network, and private mobile radio systems. Mobile satellite service offers voice, data, position location, and paging services, interconnection to the public switched telephone network, and the possibility of private networks. Performance and cost characteristics are given along with summaries of market needs and market demands. The space and ground systems of the MSS are described     

A dynamic paging scheme for long‐term evolution mobility management

In long‐term evolution, the service area is partitioned into several tracking areas (TAs), which comprise one or more cells (the radio coverages of base stations). The TAs are grouped into TA list (TAL). When an incoming call arrives, the network attempts to connect to the user equipment (UE) by paging the cells in the UE's TAL, which may incur large paging traffic that significantly consumes the limited radio resources. To resolve this issue, this paper proposes a dynamic paging scheme that determines the paging sequence of cells in real time according to the UE movement and call behavior. We compare the performance of the dynamic paging with that of the previously proposed Cell‐TA‐TAL (CTT) paging. Our study indicates that the dynamic paging outperforms the CTT paging when movement pattern is regular and the UE moves frequently. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Impact of the location area structure on the performance ofsignaling channels in wireless cellular networks

The authors consider connection-oriented wireless cellular networks such as IS-54, IS-95, GSM, and wireless ATM networks. These are connection-oriented digital networks which employ separate radio channels for the transmission of signaling information. A forward signaling channel is a common signaling channel assigned to carry the multiplexed stream of paging and channel-allocation packets from a base station to mobile stations. For wireless ATM networks, paging and virtual-circuit (VC) allocation packets are multiplexed across the forward signaling channels as part of the VC setup phase. A reverse signaling channel, which employs a contention-oriented medium access algorithm, is used by mobile stations to send channel-request and location-update packets. A location area is a region which includes a specified set of adjacent cells; it is used to track the location of mobile stations. Mobile units must reregister as they cross the boundary of a location area. The channel setup and paging response times are critical performance factors in the design of the signaling subsystem. A location area structure must be suitably selected to ensure that acceptable levels of such performance functions are achieved. A network which employs small location-areas will experience a high rate of location updates, while larger location areas lead to higher traffic intensities of paging messages. The authors overview a method for calculating the performance behavior of signaling messages. Subsequently the impact of the location area structure on the performance of the signaling system is investigated     

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.     

Fusion of digital television,broadband Internet and mobile communications—Part II: Future service scenarios

This is the second part of the tutorial paper following the previous tutorial paper describing enabling technologies in digital video broadcasting (DVB) system. The paper presents the current and future operational scenarios for DVB via satellite (DVB‐S) system. Review of the current state‐of‐the‐art technologies consisting of integration of broadband Internet and mobile communications and integration of broadband Internet and DVB are given. The future operational scenarios emphasize the fusion of DVB systems with other technologies in terms of network fusion and terminal fusion. For satellite service scenarios, it also takes into consideration mobility management and standard quality‐of‐service mechanism issues, such as integrated services and differentiated services. Several research directions for providing seamless services regardless of network, access technology and terminal in the fusion network are also highlighted in this paper. Copyright © 2007 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.     

Simulation,implementation and performance evaluation of a diversity enabled WCDMA mobile terminal

Smart antenna array technology has been shown to greatly improve the performance of wireless communication systems. In this article, we describe the impact of smart antenna array processing at the mobile terminal for Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) cellular networks. Using system simulations we demonstrate the quality of service, network coverage, and network capacity improvement provided by a WCDMA dual antenna receiver and we establish a relationship between this improvement and the link level performance. We then describe a receiver architecture for a dual antenna WCDMA mobile receiver. The proposed receiver was implemented, as part of a complete mobile terminal solution, in an ASIC using a 0.18 μm, 1.8 V CMOS technology. The ASIC was integrated with RF, analog and digital components in a PCMCIA card form factor. The PCMCIA is a 3GPP compliant user equipment and has been submitted to standardized performance and conformance tests. Experimental measurements gathered with the PCMCIA card illustrate the impact of a diversity enabled mobile data terminal on the link level performance. For various propagation environments and transmission data rates, improvements in the range of 2.7 – 10 dB in the required DPCH I _c/I _or for a 1% Block Error Rate (BLER) were observed. These measurements are within 1.4 dB of the ideal link level simulations which indicates that the predicted improvement at the network level should also materialize. The results presented in this paper show the tremendous potential of smart antenna arrays in 3G WCDMA cellular networks and establish diversity as a viable solution for high-speed cellular communications.