Reducing paging cost of tracking area list-based mobility management in LTE network

Abstract

In long-term evolution (LTE) network, service area is composed of tracking areas (TAs) lists (TALs) and a TAL includes a few neighbor TAs. In this paper, we consider paging schemes for TAL-based mobility management in LTE network. In TAL-based mobility management, whenever a user equipment (UE) enters a new TAL, it updates its location so that the current TA becomes the center TA of new TAL. We develop a mathematical model to analyze signaling cost of previous paging schemes for TAL-based mobility management. We then suggest new paging schemes to reduce paging cost. First, in order to mathematically analyze the performance of previous paging schemes, we use a Markov chain model based on 2-D random walk model. In our 2-D random walk model, unlike prior studies, the UE can move to one of four neighbor cells with equal probability to be more realistic. We also suggest new paging schemes to reduce the paging cost of previous paging schemes. With our analytical models, our paging schemes are found to be better than previous paging schemes in most cases. Various numerical results show that the proposed schemes are much more effective than previous paging schemes. These results suggest that the proposed schemes can be used effectively in the design and evaluation of mobility management in LTE network.