Intelligent paging scheme using distribution density information of users in mobile communication systems

Abstract

One of the most important issues for call delivery in mobile communication networks is to keep track of mobile users and locate them. This is called location management, and includes two basic operations of location update known as location registration and paging. Location update is the process through which mobile communication networks can obtain the location information of mobile users and track it. When a new call is destined to a mobile user, the mobile communication network queries databases, such as HLR and VLR, to get the actual location information of a called user, and then searches for a called user by sending polling signals to cells in the location area and alerts a called user of the incoming call. This searching process is called paging. Location update and paging will incur a significant mount of cost. The cost consists of radio access traffic, signaling traffic for the signaling system number 7(SS7), paging traffic, and paging delay. In order to reduce these costs, it is necessary to design a location area(LA) and a paging area(PA) properly. To determine the size of LA is a critical problem so that the total costs of location update and paging could be minimized. As LA becomes larger, radio access traffic and signaling traffic are less, but paging traffic increases. Studies of efficient paging have resulted in development of simultaneous paging, sequential paging, and intelligent paging schemes. In simultaneous paging, every call to a mobile station(MS) requires paging over all cells in an LA. In sequential paging, only a portion of an LA, known as a PA, is initially paged to find a called MS. Remaining PAs are paged one by one until the MS is found. For intelligent paging, some kind of "intelligence" is introduced in sequential paging techniques to reduce the paging cost. Most previous studies for intelligent paging have focused on the location probability distribution of an MS. In this dissertation, we suggest the intelligent paging scheme b...