Update and search algorithms for wireless two-way messaging: design and performance

Wireless two-way messaging is a new wireless data service that is rapidly gaining popularity. The basic service it provides is acknowledged exchange of short messages among subscribers or network-based servers. Like cellular/PCS systems, wireless two-way messaging systems are cellular in structure, and thus share the location management problem. We study the problem of location management for wireless two-way messaging. We first highlight the unique concerns of location management for wireless two-way messaging, and lay out its differences from cellular/PCS telephony. We then provide a new cost formulation for its study. Based on this formulation, we revisit existing schemes that have been proposed for cellular/PCS telephony to evaluate how they perform under wireless two-way messaging. We then introduce new classes of algorithms, called pending replies and deferred delivery, whose designs take advantage of the unique characteristics of wireless two-way messaging, and show through simulation, that they provide improved performance.