Adaptive location update area design for wireless cellular networks under 2D Markov walk model

In wireless cellular networks, location management operation expends the limited wireless resources to keep track the location information of a mobile terminal. Various dynamic location update (LU) schemes have been proposed to improve the efficiency of location management. However, most of them only work for certain mobility patterns. In this paper, we propose a new scheme that the LU area is adaptively designed according to the mobility pattern and traffic parameters. The 2D Markov walk is used as the mobility model which describes a broad class of mobility patterns. A recursive algorithm is developed to compute the location management cost of a general LU area shape. Due to the high computational complexity of the adaptive LU area design problem, we use an iterative greedy heuristic algorithm to find an approximation solution of the problem efficiently. The effects of the mobility patterns and traffic parameters on the designed LU area shape are investigated. Experimental results show that the LU area designed by the heuristic algorithm can adaptively change according to the given mobility pattern and traffic parameters. Compared with some existing dynamic LU schemes, the proposed adaptive LU scheme is more flexible and efficient for location management. 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.