Dynamic location and forwarding pointers for mobility management

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Abondo, Charles | Pierre, Samuel

Affiliations: Mobile Computing and Networking Research Laboratory (LARIM), Canada

Note: [] Corresponding author: Samuel Pierre, Department of Computer Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal, P.O. Box 6079, Station Centre-ville, Montréal, Que., Canada H3C 3A7. Tel.: +1 514 340 4711 ext. 4685; Fax: +1 514 340 3240; E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: GSM and IS-41 are two mobility management standards widely used in second generation networks. These two standards lean on a centralized architecture made up of home location registers (HLRs) and visitor location registers (VLRs). From these standards, the location update and search procedures always imply interrogation of the HLR, even if the two mobile terminals that want to communicate are in the same location area. Given the limited bandwidth of the radio operator channel and the new time sensitive applications of third-generation systems, such an approach of mobility management is not convenient for the next generation mobile networks. This paper proposes a method for reducing the processing load and the signalization traffic generated by update and search location procedures compared to IS-41 standard. Taking into account the specific characteristics of the traffic in the mobile networks, it introduces a semi-dynamic approach based on a hybrid architecture using forwarding pointers without the load related to the dynamic models. Numerical results show that such a method significantly improves the efficiency of location procedures.

Keywords: mobility management, 3G mobile networks, dynamic location, wireless systems, location update, location search

Journal: Mobile Information Systems, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 3-24, 2005