Location distribution of a mobile terminal and its application to paging cost reduction and minimization

Abstract Reducing the cost of dynamic mobility management in wireless communication networks has been an interesting and important issue. It is well known that by using a selective paging method, both costs for location update and terminal paging can be reduced significantly. However, an efficient selective paging method needs the information of the location distribution of a mobile terminal. Based on our previous results on random walks among rings of cell structures, we analyze the location distribution of a mobile terminal in a paging area when a phone call arrives, where the inter-call time and the cell residence time can have arbitrary probability distributions. Our analysis is conducted for both distance-based and movement-based location management schemes, and for two different call handling models, i.e., the call plus location update model and the call without location update model. Together with our earlier results on location distribution in time-based location management schemes, for several selective paging methods, including progressive paging methods, ring paging methods, and cell paging methods, we are able to obtain their expected costs of paging for distance-based, movement-based, and time-based location management schemes. We find that a progressive paging method with very small time delay can reduce the terminal paging cost dramatically, while further increasing the time delay does not result in noticeable reduction of terminal paging cost. Our work reported in this paper significantly extends our understanding of cost reduction and minimization of dynamic location management in wireless communication networks.