Eecient Location Management in Mobile Wireless Networks

Location management schemes presented in the personal communication network standards (e.g., EIA/TIA Interim Standard 41 (IS-41)) are not eecient. We propose forwarding techniques that augment the IS-41 scheme to provide eecient location management. We develop analytical models to compare the performance of the proposed approach with the IS-41 scheme. Analysis shows that forwarding signiicantly reduces the total network load due to location management. However for some network parameter values, the search cost of the forwarding scheme is very high. In order to reduce the search cost, we present a strategy to perform search-updates. A search-update occurs after a successful search, when the location information corresponding to the searched mobile host is updated at some hosts. Analysis shows that for some network parameter values, performing search-updates signiicantly reduces the search costs and total network load.