In this paper, we propose three hierarchical location management strategies for wireless mobile communication systems. The first one is home server first (HSF) scheme in which callee's location is queried at callee's home location server first. Next, we propose least-common-ancestor server first (LSF) scheme in which a search starts at the least-common-ancestor server of caller's current location and callee's home server. Finally, we propose distributed LSF in which the location management is made on 2-layered distributed structure. We evaluate the performance of the proposed schemes and compare it with that of another hierarchical scheme proposed by Wang (J.Z. Wang, A fully distributed location registration strategy for universal personal communication systems, IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun., 11(6) (1993) 850-860) and IS-41-based scheme. It is shown that the proposed schemes have reduced location management cost and that: the cost is less affected by the increment of communication cost than the compared schemes. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.