Location management for wireless networks: issues and directions

Location management is an important part of current and emerging wireless and mobile networks. Location management involves maintaining location information as mobiles power-on, move or power-off. This can be broadly divided into two steps location tracking and location information storage. Location management schemes used in first and second generation wireless networks, such as analogue cellular, PCS and GSM networks, have done a good job of providing a basic location management service for mobile users with limited mobility, applications and battery power under low to moderate traffic conditions in a macro-cellular environment. However, with increased mobility levels, traffic, use of micro and pico-cells, and emerging sophisticated applications, the current location schemes in use may lead to undesirable performance. In this review paper, we address location management issues in detail, present a qualitative analysis of all major location management schemes, discuss performance issues, and discuss several interesting ways to design location management schemes for wireless networks.

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