Movement-based location update and selective paging for PCS networks

Abstract

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.