Location Management in Cellular Networks

Authors: Bhavneet Sidhu, Hardeep Singh

Abstract:

Cellular networks provide voice and data services to the users with mobility. To deliver services to the mobile users, the cellular network is capable of tracking the locations of the users, and allowing user movement during the conversations. These capabilities are achieved by the location management. 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. In a cellular network, a service coverage area is divided into smaller areas of hexagonal shape, referred to as cells. The cellular concept was introduced to reuse the radio frequency. Continued expansion of cellular networks, coupled with an increasingly restricted mobile spectrum, has established the reduction of communication overhead as a highly important issue. Much of this traffic is used in determining the precise location of individual users when relaying calls, with the field of location management aiming to reduce this overhead through prediction of user location. This paper describes and compares various location management schemes in the cellular networks.

Keywords: Cellular Networks, Location Area, MobilityManagement, Paging.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1056132

References:

[1] I.F. Akyildiz, J.S.M. Ho & Yi-Bing Lin. Movement-based location update & selective paging for pcs N/Ws. Networking, IEEE/ACM Transactions on, 4(4):629-638, 1996.
[2] I.F. Akyildiz, Yi-Bing Lin, Wei-Ru Lai, Rong-Jaye Chen. A new random walk model for pcs networks. Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Journal on, 18(7):1254-1260, 2000.
[3] A. Bar-Noy, I.Kessler, M.Sidi. Mobile users: To update or not to update? Wireless Networks, 1(2):175-185, 1995.
[4] K. Chiang, N. Shenoy. A 2-d random-walk mobility model for LM studies in wireless networks. Vehicular Technology, IEEE Transactions on, 53(2):413-424, 2004.
[5] P.G. Escalle, V.C. Giner, and J.M. Oltra. Reducing location update and paging costs in a pcs network. Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on, 1(1):200-209, 2002.
[6] EIA/TIA. Cellular radio telecommunications intersystem operations. Technical report, July 1991.
[7] B. Furht and M. Ilyas. Wireless internet handbook - technologies, standards and applications. 2003.
[8] Daqing Gu and S.S. Rappaport. A dynamic location tracking strategy for mobile communication systems. In Vehicular Technology Conference, 1998. VTC 98. 48th IEEE, volume 1, pages 259-263 vol1, 1998.
[9] Thomas Kunz, Atif A. Siddiqi, and John Scourias. The peril of evaluating location management proposals through simulations. Wirel. Netw., 7(6):635-643, 2001.
[10] Yi-Bing Lin. Reducing location update cost in a pcs network. Networking, IEEE/ACM Transactions on, 5(1) 1997.
[11] Z. Naor, H. Levy. Minimizing the wireless cost of tracking mobile users: an adaptive threshold scheme. In INFOCOM ?98. Proceedings. IEEE, volume 2,1998.
[12] S. O., S. Onoe, S. Yasuda, A. Maebara. A new location updating method for digital cellular systems. In Vehicular Technology Conference, 1991. ''Gateway to the Future Technology in Motion'', 41st IEEE, pages 345-350, 1991.
[13] C. Rose. Minimizing the avg. cost of paging & regd: a timer-based method. Wirel. Netw., 2(2):109-116, 1996.
[14] M. Rahnema. Overview of the gsm system and protocol architecture. Communications Magazine, IEEE, 31(4), 1993.
[15] C. Rose, Roy Yates. Minimizing the avg. cost of paging under delay constraints. Wirel. Netw., 1(2):211-219, 1995.
[16] H. Xie, S. T, and D.J. Dynamic location area management & performance analysis. In Vehicular Tech. Conf., 1993 IEEE 43rd, pages 536-539, 1993.
[17] C. Rose & R. Yates, Minimizing the avg. cost of paging under delay constraints, Wireless Networks, 1 (1995) 211-219.
[18] H. Xie, S. Tabbane, and D. J., Dynamic Location Area Mgt. and Performance Analysis, Proc. 43rd IEEE Vehicular Tech. Conference, Secaucus, NJ, May 1993, pp. 536-539.