Group location management for subscribers on transportation systems in mobile communication networks

Abstract

The marvelous development of wireless communication technology over the fast two decades makes us dream forward to "wireless overwhelming wireline". The wireless mobile communications have the ubiquitous availability that they can support the exchange of information between mobile users independent of time, user location, and user movement. To realize this vision, it is fundamentally necessary to track users who move from place to place, which is supported by location management function. The location management performs two elementary operations, such as location update and paging. The location update, also known as a location registration, in which each mobile user updates its location information informs the network about user``s current location, and paging in which the network searches for the camped-on cell makes a connection between the called user and the base station of the camped-on cell. Thus, the location update and the paging enable the network to track the user``s location and to deliver an incoming call to the user, respectively. The need of supporting the tremendously growing number of mobile subscribers and the desire of providing worldwide roaming have critically increased the importance of efficient location update and paging algorithms that result in a low signaling cost, a low database access cost, and a low delay. In this thesis, we open up a new field of research in location management. We research location updates and pagings for transportation systems in mobile communication networks, which have not been researched ever. Transportation systems such as trains and coaches have three specific characteristics compared with pedestrians: high velocity of movement, large number of users in the system, and the same location for all users in the system. By using these characteristics, two new concepts of group location register and representative identity are introduced to manage all users in the transportation systems as a group. We develop new...