A Dynamic HLR Location Management Scheme for PCS Networks

Jie Li
Institute of Information Sciences & Electronics University of Tsukuba Tsukuba Science City Ibaraki 305-8573, Japan Email: lijie@is.tsukuba.ac.jp

Yi Pan
Department of Computer Science Georgia State University University Plaza, Atlanta GA 30303, USA Email: cscyip@suez.cs.gsu.edu

Yang Xiao
Computer Science Division The University of Memphis 373 Dunn Hall, Memphis TN 38152, USA Email: YangXiao@ieee.org

Abstract In this paper, a dynamic HLR (Home Location Register) scheme for location management in PCS (Personal Communications Service) networks is presented. The proposed scheme provides a dynamic copy of mobile terminal location information in the nearest (current) HLR database. A modied table lookup procedure is also proposed for determining the current HLR easily. It allows the location registration and call delivery to be performed efciently. An analytical model is developed for studying the performance of the proposed scheme. The performance study shows that the proposed scheme signicantly reduces the system overhead for location management in PCS networks.

I. I NTRODUCTION Personal Communication Service (PCS) networks provide wireless communication services that enable Mobile Terminals (MTs) to transfer any form of information between any location at any time. Location management, i.e., how to track the MTs that move from place to place is a key issue in PCS networks [1], [2], [3], [5], [10], [11], [16], [19], [27], [30]. As the number of PCS subscribers increase, the system overheads involved with the location management will increase beyond the capacity of the current network design (e.g., [21], [23], [17]). Methods for reducing the overheads are critically important for the design and implementation of PCS networks. The two-tier system of Home Location Register (HLR) and the Visitor Location Register (VLR) databases is used for the location management in PCS networks. The HLR contains the permanent data (e.g., directory number, prole information, current location, and validation period) of the MTs whose primary subscription is within the area. For each MT, it contains

a pointer to the VLR to assist routing incoming calls. A VLR is associated with a Mobile Switching Center (MSC) in the networks. It contains temporary record for all MTs currently active within the service area of the MSC. The VLR retrieves information for handling calls to or from a visiting MT. To facilitate the tracking of a moving MT, a PCS network is partitioned into many Registration Areas (RAs). Each RA may include tens or hundreds of cells, which is a basic unit of area served by a base station (BS). Each RA is serviced by a VLR. An HLR is associated with tens or hundreds of VLRs. The service area served by an HLR is referred to as Service Area (SA). In a PCS network, there are several HLRs as shown in Fig. 1. For convenience, we call the HLR that contains the permanent data information of an MT the master HLR for the MT. The SA that is associated with the master HLR is called the master SA for the MT. When an MT moves to another new SA, the new SA that the MT resides is called the current SA. The associated HLR is called the current HLR for the MT. All the popular existing PCS networks such as Pan-European Digital Celluar (GSM) and North American Digital Celluar (IS41) [24] employ the HLR/VLR architecture [13]. There are two basic operations in location management: location registration and call delivery. Location registration is the process through which system tracks the locations of MTs that move in the networks. The MT reports its up-to-date location information dynamically. When an incoming call arrives, the system searches for the called MT (the callee) by sending a location request message to the HLR of the callee. The HLR determines the VLR of callee and sends a location message the associated MSC. Then the MSC sends the polling signals to all the cells in the RA to determine

0-7803-8356-7/04/$20.00 (C) 2004 IEEE

IEEE INFOCOM 2004

HLR

Signaling network ... VLR ... MSC VLR MSC VLR MSC

PSTN

... BS

... ... BS MT Location Area(LA) Service Area(SA) BS BS

Fig. 1.

A PCS network

the cell location of the callee. This searching process is referred to as call delivery. In the existing location management schemes, only the master HLR is used for an MT even though it may move to another SA associated with another HLR. When an MT moves far away from its master HLR, the communication costs for accessing the master HLR for both location registration and call delivery will increase dramatically. This problem leads us to consider why we cannot use the current HLR of an MT for the location management to improve the system performance. In this paper, we introduce a novel dynamic HLR location management scheme for PCS networks. In the proposed scheme, a dynamic copy of location information of an MT is made in the nearest (current) HLR which can be accessed for location management. A modied table lookup procedure is also proposed for determining the current HLR easily. With the proposed scheme, an MT can always access the location data in its nearest HLR for performing location registration and call delivery. It is also easily to implement the proposed dynamic HLR location management scheme with existing signaling network for PCS networks which will be described in section IV. An analytical model is developed to study the performance of the proposed scheme. It is clearly shown that the proposed scheme can reduce the total cost of location registration and call delivery signicantly from about 20% to even 70% comparing to the existing location management scheme. Some related works have been conducted for location management in PCS networks (e.g., [1], [2], [3], [9], [11], [16], [17], [18], [20], [22], [27], [28], [29], [30]). A per-user location caching strategy [14] is introduced

to reduce the signaling cost for call delivery by reusing the cached information about a called MTs location from a previous call. The performance of this scheme depends on the probability that the cached information is valid. A user prole replication scheme is proposed in [25]. Based on this scheme, user proles are replicated at selected locations such that the call delivery delay can be reduced. The replication, however, is made by a centralized system which must collect the mobility and calling parameters of the whole user population from time to time. To generate and distribute the replication decision for a large user population is a computationally intensive and time-consuming process which may incur signicant amount of network bandwidth. A dynamic hierarchical database architecture [9] is introduced for location management in PCS networks. However, a new level of databases called the directory registers is added to the PCS networks which increases the cost of systems in their approach. It also causes difculties to the design and implementation of the systems. Besides, each directory register should determine the location information distribution strategies for its associated MTs and set up the location pointers at the selected remote directory registers for each MT from time to time. This incurs a signicant amount of network bandwidth and computational overheads. A local anchor scheme [8], [28] is proposed to reduce the accessing messages to the master HLR by using a local anchor for an MT, where the local anchor acts as a VLR. In the local anchor scheme, only the master HLR is used in the existing scheme. The location registration messages can be sent to the local anchor instead of the master HLR. For the call delivery, it is still necessary to access the master HLR to have the point of local anchor, and then access the VLR for the callee through the local anchor. The local anchor, however, is selected dynamically and the problem of how to determine the local anchors for moving MTs optimally remains open. In coutrast, our proposed scheme use the current HLR to reduce the signaling costs to enhance the system performance. We can also optimally select the current HLR easily based on the location of an MT. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. System description is presented in section II. Section III examines the existing location management scheme. Section IV presents the proposed dynamic HLR location management method. An analytical model is presented in section V. Section VI presents the performance comparisons between the proposed location management method and the existing one. Section VII concludes the paper.

0-7803-8356-7/04/$20.00 (C) 2004 IEEE

IEEE INFOCOM 2004

II. S YSTEM

DESCRIPTION
(6) (5)

HLR (3) (4)

We consider the PCS network shown in Fig. 1. In the PCS network, a given geographically serviced area is divided into cells. In each cell, there is a base station (BS) which is used to communicate with mobile users over preassigned radio frequencies. Groups of several cells are connected to a Mobile Switching Center (MSC) through which the calls are then routed to the telephone networks. MSC is a telephone exchange specially assembled for mobile applications. In current PCS networks, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or Public Switched Data Network (PSDN) are used as the backbone wireline network. The area serviced by a MSC is called a Registration Area (RA). A group of RAs compose a Service Area (SA). Each SA is serviced by an HLR. A PCS network includes several SAs and thus several HLRs. For convenience, we call the HLR that contains the permanent data information of an MT the master HLR for the MT. The SA that is associated with the master HLR is called the master SA for the MT. When an MT moves to anther new SA, the new SA that the MT resides is called the current SA. The associated HLR is called the current HLR for the MT. The signaling messages in PCS networks are carried by the Signaling System No.7 (SS7) network. In the signaling system, there are two kinds of elements: the Service Control Point (SCP) and the Signal Transfer Point (STP). The SCP contains the HLR database and the associated logic which handles database query and update requests initiated by the MSCs. The STP is a switch on the SS7 network which is responsible for the routing of signaling messages from an MSC based on their destination addresses. These network elements are interconnected by wireline links. III. E XISTING
LOCATION MANAGEMENT

Signaling network

VLR MSC

VLR MSC (2)

BS (1)

MT

Fig. 2.

The existing location registration scheme

3)

4)

5) 6)

location registration message to the master HLR of the MT. The message is routed to a STP which determines the master HLR of the called MT from its Mobile Identication Number (MIN) by a table lookup procedure called Global Title Translation (GTT). The location message is then forwarded to the master HLR. The master HLR updates its record indicating the current serving MSC of the MT and sends a registration acknowledgment message to the new MSC. The master HLR sends a registration cancellation message to the old MSC. The old MSC deletes the record of the MT in its associated VLR and sends a cancellation acknowledgment message to the master HLR.

B. The existing call delivery scheme The existing procedure of call delivery is described as follows (also see Fig. 3). 1) A call is initiated by an MT and the base station forwards the call initiation signal to the MSC. 2) The MSC sends a location request message to the master HLR of the called MT through a STP where GTT is performed. 3) The location request is forwarded to the master HLR. 4) The master HLR sends a location request message to the MSC serving the called MT. 5) The MSC determines the cell location of the called MT and assigns it a Temporary Location Directory Number (TLDN). The MSC then sends this TLDN to the master HLR.

We rst examine the existing location management which includes location registration scheme and the call delivery scheme, which are specied under the IS-41 standard as follows (also see Fig. 2). In the IS-41, the (master) HLR knows the exact MSC where its associated MTs reside. A. The existing location registration scheme 1) The MT detects that it has entered a new RA and sends a location update message to the new MSC through the base station. 2) The MSC updates its associated VLR indicating that the MT is residing in its area and sends a

0-7803-8356-7/04/$20.00 (C) 2004 IEEE

IEEE INFOCOM 2004

HLR (3) (6) (5) Signaling network VLR (2) MSC MSC (7) BS (4)

Old current HLR

New current HLR

Send record about the MT

VLR

LA

LA

(1) BS

MT

The MT moves to another SA MT

MT MT
SA SA

Fig. 3.

The existing scheme of call delivery

Fig. 4.

Copy record of an MT to the new current HLR

6) The master HLR forwards the TLDN to the calling MSC. 7) The calling MSC sets up a connection to the called MSC using this TLDN. IV. P ROPOSED DYNAMIC HLR
LOCATION

MANAGEMENT SCHEME

With the existing location management, only the master HLR of MTs is accessed to locate the VLRs. There is nothing to do with the current (i.e., the nearest) HLR with the existing location management. As the number of PCS subscribers increases continually, the accesses to the master HLR and the associated volume of the signaling messages will increase explosively. When an MT locates far away from its master HLR, the communication costs for accessing the master HLR for both the location registration and call delivery with the existing scheme will increase dramatically. The problem with the existing scheme lead us to propose a novel dynamic HLR location management scheme costs of location management, especially the access cost to the HLR databases. In the propose dyanmic HLR location management scheme, The HLR/VLR database architecture and the signaling system remain unchanged while additional operation of making a copy between HLRs is added when an MT moves to another SA. In the proposed dynamic HLR management scheme, when an MT moves from its master SA to a new SA, the new current HLR obtained a copy of the data about the MT from the old current HLR and send an acknowledgment message to the old current HLR as shown in Fig. 4. If the old HLR is the master HLR, it does nothing with the acknowledgment message; otherwise, it deletes

the record of the MT in the old current HLR. With the proposed scheme, an MT can always use the location data in its nearest (current) HLR for performing location registration and call delivery. Another key issue in the proposed scheme is to route the location management message to the current HLR for a specic MT. In the existing location registration and call delivery schemes, the STP in the signaling network is used to switch the location management message to the master HLR through the GTT table lookup procedure. For the proposed scheme, we slightly modify the GTT table lookup procedure for the STP so that the STP switches the location management message from an MSC to the associate HLR which is in the same SA of the MSC for the location registration. For the call delivery procedure, the STP at rst checked if the caller (an MT that initiates a call) is in the same SA of the callee (an MT that receives the call). This can be conducted by checking if there is a record (i.e., a pointer to the MSC of the callee) in the associate HLR of the MSC of the caller. If there exists a record in the associate HLR, the HLR is either the current HLR or the master HLR of the callee, which can be used to nd the MSC of the callee. If there is not the record in the associate HLR, the caller is located in a different SA than the callee. In the case, the existing MT-dependent table lookup procedure is applied to nd the master HLR of the callee, and then nd the current HLR of the callee. The modied GTT table lookup procedure is espcially effective when the caller and callee are in the same SA for the call delivery since calls are more likely to be local calls instead of remote calls. With the copy of data about a specic MT in the

0-7803-8356-7/04/$20.00 (C) 2004 IEEE

IEEE INFOCOM 2004

new current HLR and the modied GTT table lookup procedure, we have the following proposed location registration and call delivery schemes A. The proposed location registration scheme The proposed location registration scheme is presented as follows. 1) The MT detects that it has entered a new RA and sends a location update message to the associated new MSC through the base station. 2) The new MSC updates its associated VLR indicating that the MT is residing in its area and sends a location registration message to the STP in the signaling network. 3) The message is routed to the associate HLR of the new MSC through the STP by the modied MSCdependent GTT table lookup procedure. Note that the associate HLR is also the current (nearest) HLR for the MT. 4) The current HLR updates its record indicating the current serving (new) MSC of the MT and sends a registration acknowledgment message to the new MSC. If the MT stays in the same SA, proceed to the next step; otherwise (i.e., the MT moved into a new SA), goto Step 7. 5) The current HLR sends a registration cancellation message to the old MSC. 6) The old MSC deletes the record of the MT in its associate VLR and sends a cancellation acknowledgment message to the current HLR, stop. 7) (For the case that the MT moved into a new SA) The new current HLR sends a message to the old current HLR informing the movement of the MT. 8) The old current HLR sends its record about the MT to the new current HLR. It also sends a registration cancellation message to the old MSC. 9) The old MSC deletes the record of the MT in its associate VLR and sends a cancellation acknowledgment message to the old current HLR. 10) If the new current HLR is the master HLR, it just sends the old current HLR a registration acknowledgment message; otherwise it sends both the old current HLR and the master HLR the a registration acknowledgment message. 11) For the old HLR, if it is the master HLR, it updates its record pointing to the new current HLR; otherwise, it deletes the record of the MT. 12) For the master HLR, if it is the new current HLR, it does nothing; otherwise, it updates its record pointing to the new current HLR.

Old current HLR New current HLR (master HLR) (11) (7) HLR HLR (8) (9) (10) Signaling network (8) VLR MSC BS (1) MT RA (4) VLR MSC (2) (3)

RA

Fig. 5.

The proposed scheme of location registration

Comparing to the existing location registration scheme, there are some steps more (i.e., steps 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12) in the proposed scheme which make a copy of the record of the MT to the new current HLR when the MT moves into a new SA. Fig. 5 shows the location registration process when the MT moves into a new SA and the old HLR is the master HLR. In step 3 of the proposed scheme, the current HLR of the MT is identied directly by the STP using the modied table lookup procedure. Since the modied table lookup procedure could be easier to implement than the origin table lookup procedure, the cost of determining the current HLR is smaller to the cost of determining the master HLR. For convenience, we assume that cost of determining the current HLR is the same to the cost of determining the master HLR. The proposed scheme enables that the MT always is serviced by its current HLR and then reduces the cost of accessing HLR which we will show more later by performance study. B. The proposed call delivery scheme The proposed call delivery scheme is presented as follows. 1) A call is initiated by an MT (caller) and the base station forwards the call initiation signal to the MSC. 2) The MSC sends a location request message to the associate HLR. If the caller is in the same SA, the associate HLR is used as the current HLR for the HLR; otherwise, the existing GTT table lookup procedure is used to nd the master HLR of the called MT, and then to nd the current HLR of the called MT.

0-7803-8356-7/04/$20.00 (C) 2004 IEEE

IEEE INFOCOM 2004

3) The location request is forwarded to the current HLR of the called MT. 4) The current HLR sends a location request message to the MSC serving the called MT. 5) The MSC determines the cell location of the called MT and assigns it a Temporary Location Directory Number (TLDN). The MSC then sends this TLDN to the current HLR. 6) The current HLR forwards the TLDN to the calling MSC. 7) The calling MSC sets up a connection to the called MSC using this TLDN.
Current HLR of the called MT HLR (3) Signaling network (2) VLR MSC (6) BS MT MT RA (5) MSC (4) VLR

access the HLR in New York. This reduces the signaling overhead for location registration. V. A NALYTICAL
MODEL

(1) RA

Fig. 6.

The proposed scheme of call delivery

In the proposed call delivery scheme, the current HLR is accessed which can reduce the cost of call delivery caused by roaming signicantly espeically when the calling MT and the called MT are in the same SA as shown in Fig. 6. For example, suppose that the master HLR of a given MT is located in New York and it is currently roaming in Los Angeles. If a signicant number of the incoming calls for the MT are originated from another town in California such as San Francisco. Suppose that the MTs in both Los Angeles and San Francisco are serviced by an HLR in California. The two HLRs located in California and New York are the current HLR and the master HLR of the MT, respectively. When a call is initiated for this MT from San Francisco, the search can be conducted in the current HLR without requiring a query at the master HLR which is located far away in New York. This reduces the signaling overhead for call delivery signicantly. On the other hand, when the MT moves to another RA within the same SA serviced by the current HLR, only the record in the current HLR is updated. Again, it is not necessary to

To study the performance of the proposed location management scheme and compare it with the existing one, we establish the following analytical model. For a target MT, we dene l , a be the incoming call arrival rates from the same SA where the MT locates and from other SAs, respectively. Let c = l + a . Denote the average RA residence time and the interSA movement probability by 1/m and p, respectively. The values of 1/m and p determine the frequency and the locality of the movements. In this analysis, we assume the database access and the signaling costs are measured by the delays required to complete the database update/query and signal transmission, respectively. These delay values can be obtained by on-line measurements, if such measurement functions are available in the particular network, or by a table lookup process. For given the particular time of day, the table provides the access cost for a specied database or the signaling cost for a specied communication link. These values are then used for determining the location information distribution strategy for the MTs. For the existing approach, the table can be located at each HLR. For the proposed approach, the table can be located at the each current HLR. The table should be updated frequently to reect the current status of the network. Note that cost for accessing HLRs and VLRs including the communication delay (cost). We assume that the cost for a database update is equal to the cost for a database query. This assumption is reasonable since the cost for database update or query is much smaller than the communication cost. Denote costs for updating or querying the HLR and VLR by ch and cv , respectively. Let cg be the cost for performing Global Title Translation (GTT) to determine the master HLR. To perform location registration or call delivery, there are signaling costs over communication lines among the same SA or between two different SAs. Let cl 1 and cl 2 be the signaling costs for the communication links in the same SA and between two different SAs, respectively. Without loss of generality, we assume that there are N SAs in the PCS network. The possibility that an MT resides in any SA is considered to be the same (i.e., 1/N ). For convenience, we give the list of notation used in the performance analysis. l , a : the incoming call arrival rates (i.e., average number of incoming calls per unit of time) from

0-7803-8356-7/04/$20.00 (C) 2004 IEEE

IEEE INFOCOM 2004

the same SA where the called MT locates and from other SAs, respectively. c = l + a . 1/m : the average RA residence time. p: inter-SA movement probability. ch : cost for updating or querying the HLR. cv : cost for updating or querying the VLR. cg : cost for performing the Global Title Translation (GTT) to determine the master HLR. It is assumed that the cost of using the caching scheme to determine the current HLR is similar to the cost of performing GTT to determine the master HLR. So cg can also be used as the cost for determining the current HLR. cl 1 and cl 2 : signaling costs for the communication links in the same SA and between different two SAs, respectively. We also call cl 1 and cl 2 intra-SA signaling cost and inter-SA signaling cost, respectively. N : number of SAs in the PCS network. Assume that the possibility that an MT resides in any SA is considered to be the same (i.e., 1/N ).

Case 1. master HLR

Case 2. SA master HLR

MT MT SA Case 3. master HLR Case 4. master HLR SA SA SA SA

SA

MT

MT (a) Cases for the existing location registration scheme

Case 1. current HLR

Case 2. old current HLR new current HLR

A. Costs of location registration 1) Existing location registration scheme: We rst derive the costs of location registration for the existing location registration scheme. With the concepts of the master HLR (SA), and the current HLR (SA), we consider exhaustively the following four cases shown in Fig. 7(a): Case 1, the MT moves in its master SA; Case 2, the MT moves in the same SA which is different to the master SA; Case 3, the MT moves to another new SA, and either the origin SA or the new SA is the master SA; Case 4, the MT moves to another new SA, and neither the origin SA nor the new SA is the master SA. We obtain the costs for case 1 as follows. To perform the location registration procedure shown in Fig. 2, there are signaling costs over four communication links. Two signaling costs over the links between the new MSC and the HLR are taken into account for sending location registration message to the HLR and sending back registration acknowledgment message to the new MSC. Another two signaling costs over the links between the old MSC and the HLR are taken into account for sending the registration cancellation message to the old MSC and sending back the cancellation acknowledgment message to the HLR. For the case that the MT moves in its master SA, the total signaling costs for performing a location registration are 4cl 1 . Similarly, for cases 2, 3, and 4, the total signaling costs for performing a location registration are 4cl 2 , 2(cl 1 +
MT MT SA SA SA

(b) Cases for the proposed location registration scheme

Fig. 7.

Cases for location registration

cl 2 ), and 4cl 2 , respectively. Note that the possibility that the MT does not move to another SA is 1 p. The possibility that the MT resides in its master SA (i.e., case 1) is (1 p)/N . Similarly, the possibilities for cases 2, 3, and 4 are (1 p)(N 1)/N , 2 p/N , (N 2) p/N , respectively. To perform a location registration, it needs to update the data in the old and new VLRs and the HLR. Taking the costs of performing two VLR database updates (one for the new VLR and the another for the old VLR) and one HLR database update (i.e., 2cv and ch ) and the cost for performing the Global Title Translation (GTT) (i.e., cg ) into account, the total costs per unit time for location registration under the existing location registration scheme is expressed as follows,

0-7803-8356-7/04/$20.00 (C) 2004 IEEE

IEEE INFOCOM 2004

1 p (1 p)(N 1) 4c l 1 + 4c l 2 N N 2p (N 2) p + 2(cl 1 + cl 2 ) + 4c l 2 + 2c v + c h + c g ] N N 4 (1) = m [ {cl 1 + (N 1)cl 2 } + 2cv + ch + cg ]. N 2) Proposed location registration scheme: For the proposed location registration scheme, we only need to consider the following two cases shown in Fig. 7(b): Case 1, the MT moves in the same SA with possibility (1 p); Case 2, the MT moves to another different SA with possibility p. Similar to the analysis for the existing location registration scheme, we have the signaling costs for case 1 as 4cl 1 . According to the proposed location registration scheme, there are two VLR database updates and one HLR database update for case 1. So the cost of database updates for case 1 is 2cv + ch . For case 2, the derivation of the signaling and database update costs should be careful since they involve with operations between the old and new current HLRs. There are 8 steps (i.e., steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, and 10) in the proposed location update registration scheme for case 2 shown in Fig. 5. There are two intra-SA signaling costs 2cl 1 over links between the new MSC and the new current HLR (steps 3 and 4) and other two intraSA signaling costs 2cl 1 over links between the old MSC and the old current HLR (steps 8 and 9). Three interSA signaling costs 3cl 2 are taken into account over links between the new current HLR and the old current HLR (steps 7, 8, and 10). Furthermore, there are two VLR updates (one for the new VLR and another for the old VLR) with costs 2cv and three HLR updates (the rst for accessing the new current HLR from the new VLR, the second for accessing the old current HLR from the new current HLR, and the third for accessing the new current HLR from the old current HLR) with costs 3ch . Note that the possibilities for cases 1 and 2 are (1 p) and p. Taking the cost for determining the current HLR (i.e., cg ) into account, we have the costs per unit time for location registration under the proposed location registration scheme as follows, CLR = m [ CLR = m {(1 p)(4cl 1 + 2cv + ch ) + p(4cl 1 + 3cl 2 + 2cv + 3ch ) + cg }. B. Costs of call delivery 1) Existing call delivery scheme: Here we derive the cost of call delivery under the existing call delivery scheme at rst. We also consider the following four cases (2)

shown in Fig. 8(a) exhaustively: Case 1, the called MT is in its master SA and the calling MT and the called MT are in the same SA; Case 2, the calling MT and the called MT are in the same SA which is different to master SA of the called MT; Case 3, the calling MT and the called MT are in the different two SAs, and one of the two SAs is the master SA of the called MT; Case 4, the calling MT and the called MT are in the different two SAs, and neither is the master SA of the called MT.
Case 1. master HLR Case 2. SA master HLR

MT MT SA Case 3. One is the master HLR SA SA SA Case 4. master HLR SA SA

MT

MT (a) Cases for the existing call delivery scheme

Case 1. current HLR

Case 2. master HLR current HLR MT

SA

MT SA SA

(b) Cases for the proposed call delivery scheme

Fig. 8.

Cases for call delivery

Similarly to the derivation of the costs of location registration, for the existing call delivery scheme, we have the signaling costs for cases 1, 2, 3, and 4 as 4cl 1 ,

0-7803-8356-7/04/$20.00 (C) 2004 IEEE

IEEE INFOCOM 2004

4cl 2 , 2cl 1 + 2cl 2 , and 4cl 2 , respectively. The incoming call arrival rates for cases 1, 2, 3, and 4 are l , l , a , and a , respectively. Note that there are N SAs and the possibility that an MT resides in any SA is considered to be the same (i.e., 1/N ). Then the possibilities that cases 1, 2, 3, and 4 occur are 1/N 2 (= 1/N 1/N ), (N 1)/N 2 (= 1/N (N 1)/N ), 2(N 1)/N 2 (= 1/N (N 1)/N + 1/N (N 1)/N ), and (N 1)/N (N 2)/N , respectively. The costs for database updates/queries and the cost of performing the Global Title Translation (GTT) for the above four cases are 2cv + ch and cg , respectively. To sum up, we obtain the costs per unit time for call delivery under the existing scheme as follows, 1 (4c + 2cv + ch + cg ) N 2 l1 (N 1) (4cl 2 + 2cv + ch + cg ) +l N2 2(N 1) (2cl 1 + 2cl 2 + 2cv + ch + cg ) +a N2 (N 1)(N 2) (4cl 2 + 2cv + ch + cg ) +a N2 1 = l 2 (4cl 1 4cl 2 ) N 1 +l (4cl 2 + 2cv + ch + cg ) N 2(N 1) (2cl 1 2ccl 2 ) +a N2 N 1 (3) +a (4cl 2 + 2cv + ch + cg ). N 2) Proposed call delivery scheme: For the proposed call delivery scheme, we only need to consider following cases shown in Fig. 8(b): Case 1, the calling MT and the called MT are in the same SA; Case 2, the calling MT and the called MT are in the different two SAs. It is easy to obtain that the signaling costs for cases 1 and 2 are 4cl 1 and 2cl 1 + 4cl 2 , respectively. The possibilities that cases 1 and 2 occur are 1/N and (N 1)/N , respectively. The database updates costs and the cost of performing the caching scheme to determine the current HLR for the above two cases are 2cv + ch , and cg , respectively. We obtain the costs per unit time for call delivery under the proposed scheme. CCD = l 1 (4cl 1 + 2cv + ch + cg ) N N 1 +a (2cl 1 + 4cl 2 + 2cv + ch + cg ). (4) N C. Total costs CCD = l Denote the total costs per unit time for location registration and call delivery under the existing scheme

and the proposed scheme by C and C , respectively. To sum up, we express the total costs per unit time, C and C as follows. (5) C = CLR + CCD C = CLR + CCD VI. P ERFORMANCE
COMPARISONS

(6)

The analytical model allows us to study the system performance numerically. In this section, we compare the proposed location management method with the existing one to investigate how much we can gain by applying the proposed location management scheme. For comparison, we dene the relative cost of the proposed location management scheme as the ratio of the total cost per unit time for the proposed scheme to that of the existing one, C /C. We also dene the call-to-mobility ratio (CMR) as the ratio of the call arrival rate to the mobility rate, i.e., CMR = c /m . An MT has smaller mean cell residence time than the mean call arrival time interval to the MR if CMR < 1, and vice versa. That is, the smaller the CMR, the higher the mobility that an MT has. We have conducted the numerical experiments extensively. Due to the limitation of the space, we presents the typical results here. In the performance comparison, we set N = 10, i.e., there are 10 SAs in the PCS network. Consider that the value of the inter-SA movement possibility of an MT, p should not be so big since it is not practical to assume that an MT moves to another SA frequently. We set p = 0.005 (i.e., p = 0.5%) in the comparison at rst. To study the effect of p, we also change the value of p. Note that the value of cl 2 should be larger than that of cl 1 . In the study, the signaling costs are normalized to cl 1 such that cl 1 = 1. To study the effect of varying the cost parameters cl 2 , we consider the cases that cl 2 =2, 3, and 4. It is practical to assume that the signaling cost (including the communication cost) is larger than the costs of updating databases (i.e., ch , cv ) and performing global title translation (GTT) (i.e., cg ). It is reasonable to consider that cg > ch > cv . We set cv = 0.1, ch = 0.2, and cg = 0.3. Furthermore, to study the effect of the incoming call arrival rates from the same SA where the MT locates, l and that from other SAs, a , we consider two cases of incoming call arrival rates: case 1, l = 1, a = 9; case 2, l = 4, a = 6. There are less incoming call arrival rates from the same SA where the MT locates for case 1 than that for case 2. Fig. 9 and 10 show the relative cost for case 1 and case 2, respectively, as the value of CMR varies from 0.001 through 1000. In general, the relative cost increases with

0-7803-8356-7/04/$20.00 (C) 2004 IEEE

IEEE INFOCOM 2004

1.0 c_l2=2 c_l1 c_l2=3 c_l1 c_l2=4 c_l1 0.8

1.0 p=0.001 p=0.021 p=0.041 0.8

C/C

0.6

C/C

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2 0.001

0.01

0.1

1 10 Call-to-Mobility Ratio

100

1000

0.2 0.001

0.01

0.1

1 10 Call-to-Mobility Ratio

100

1000

Fig. 9.

Relative cost with l = 1, a = 9 and p = 0.005.

Fig. 11.

Relative cost with l = 1, a = 9, cl 1 = 1 and cl 2 = 3.

1.0 p=0.001 p=0.021 p=0.041 0.8

1.0 c_l2=2 c_l1 c_l2=3 c_l1 c_l2=4 c_l1 0.8

C/C

C/C

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2 0.001

0.01

0.1

1 10 Call-to-Mobility Ratio

100

1000

0.2 0.001

0.01

0.1

1 10 Call-to-Mobility Ratio

100

1000

Fig. 10.

Relative cost with l = 4, a = 6 and p = 0.005.

Fig. 12.

Relative cost with l = 4, a = 6, cl 1 = 1 and cl 2 = 3.

CMR. When the CMR is low, the mobility rate is high compared to the call arrival rate and the cost for location registration dominates. More than 60 percentages of cost saving can be obtained by the proposed location scheme when CMR< 0.1 (i.e., the mobility is relatively high). When CMR is high, the call delivery cost dominates. These gures show that at least more than 20 percent of cost saving can be obtained by the proposed scheme for CMR> 10 (i.e., the mobility is relatively low). Now we change the value of p from 0.001 to 0.041 with cl 1 = 1 and cl 2 = 3. Fig. 11 and 12 show the relative cost for values of the inter-SA movement possibility, p, being 0.001, 0.021, 0.041, as the value of CMR varies from 0.001 through 1000. From the practical point of view, the value of inter-SA movement possibility, p, should be not large. These results show that the smaller

inter-SA movement probability results in a slightly lower relative cost. The ratio of the total cost per unit time is not sensitive to the parameter p. The above results may be expected since the MT is always serviced by its current HLR in the proposed location management scheme. The comparisons have been conducted extensively. Similar results are obtained under different system models with different parameter settings. VII. C ONCLUSIONS A novel dynamic HLR management scheme for location management in PCS networks is presented. The idea of the proposed method is simple and effectively. It provides a dynamic copy of location information of mobile terminals in the nearest HLR database. A modied table lookup procedure is also proposed for

0-7803-8356-7/04/$20.00 (C) 2004 IEEE

IEEE INFOCOM 2004

determining the current HLR easily. With the proposed scheme, an MT can always access the location data in its nearest HLR for performing location registration and call delivery efciently, and then reduces the signaling and database access trafc. The architecture and the functions of existing network elements, such as the HLRs, and the VLRs remain unchanged. An analytical model is also presented to study the performance of location management methods. By applying the analytical model, we conduct the performance comparison between the proposed location management scheme and the existing one. The performance study shows that the proposed method can reduce the total costs of location registration and call delivery comparing to the existing location management scheme signicantly from about 20% to even 70%. R EFERENCES
[1] T.X. Brown, S. Mohan, Mobility management for personal communications systems, IEEE Trans. Vehicular Technology, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 269-278, May 1997. [2] Y. Fang, Chlamtac and Y. Lin, Portable movement modeling for PCS Networks, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol.49, no.4, pp.1356-1363, July 2000. [3] Y. Fang, Chlamtac and H. Fei, Analytical results for optimal choice of location update interval for mobility database failure restoration in PCS networks, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol.11, no.6, pp.615-624, June 2000. [4] V.K. Garg and J.E. Wilkes, Wireless and Personal Communications Systems, Prentice-Hall, Inc. NJ, 1996. [5] The Mobile Communications Handbook, J.D. Gibson (Editorin-Chief), CRC Press & IEEE Press, 1996. [6] D.J. Goodman, G.P. Pollini, and K.S. Meier-Hellstern, Network control for wireless communications, IEEE Commun. Mag., pp. 116-124, Dec. 1992. [7] L. Hanzo, The Pan-European Celluar System, The Mobile Communications Handbook, J.D. Gibson (Editor-in-Chief), CRC Press & IEEE Press, 399-418, 1996. [8] J. Ho and I, Akyildiz, Local anchor scheme for reducing location tracking costs in personal communications networks, IEEE/ACM Trans. Networking, vol. 55, no. 5, pp. 709-725, Oct. 1996. [9] J. Ho and I, Akyildiz, Dynamic hierarchical database architecture for location management in PCS networks, IEEE/ACM Trans. Networking, vol. 5, no. 5, pp. 646-660, Oct. 1997. [10] J. Homa, and S. Harris, Intelligent network requirements for personal communications services, IEEE Commun. Mag., pp. 70-76, Feb. 1992. [11] C.L. I, G.P. Pollini, and R.D. Gitlin, PCS mobility management using the reverse virtual call setup algorithm, IEEE/ACM Trans. Networking, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 13-24, Feb. 1997. [12] R. Jain and Y. Lin, Performance modeling of an auxiliary user location strategy in a PCS network, ACM-Baltzer Wireless Networks, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 197-210, 1995. [13] R. Jain, Y. Lin, C. Lo, and S. Mohan, Location strategies for personal communications services, The Mobile Communications Handbook, J.D. Gibson (Editor-in-Chief), CRC Press & IEEE Press, 289-318, 1996.

[14] R. Jain, Y. Lin, and S. Mohan, A caching strategy to reduce network impacts on PCS, IEEE J. Select. Areas Comm., vol. 12, no. 8, pp. 1434-1445, 1994. [15] L. Kleinrock, Queuing Systems, Vol. 2: Computer Applications. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1976. [16] P. Krishna, N.H. Vaidya, and D.K. Pradhan, Location Management in Distributed Mobile Environment, 3rd Int. Conf. on Parallel and Distributed Information Systems, Austin, Sept. 1994. [17] J. Li, H. Kameda, and K. Li, Optimal dynamic mobility management for PCS networks, IEEE/ACM Trans. on Networking, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 319 - 327, 2000. [18] J. Li, Y, Pan and X. Jia, Analysis of dynamic location management for PCS networks, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol 51, issue 5, pp. 1109- 1119, Sep. 2002. [19] Y. Lin, Mobility management for cellular telephony networks, IEEE Parallel & Distributed Technology, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 65-73, Winter 1996. [20] Y. Lin, Reducing location update cost in a pcs network, IEEE/ACM Trans. Networking, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 25-33, Feb. 1997. [21] C. Lo, R. Wollf, and R. Bernhardt, Expected network database transaction volume to support personal communications services, Proc. 1st Int. Conf. Universal Personal Communications, pp. 1-6, Sept. 1992. [22] W. Ma and Y. Fang, Two-level pointer forwarding strategy for location management in PCS networks, " IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 32-45, Jan.-Mar. 2002. [23] K. Meier-Hellstern and E. Alonso, The use of SS7 and GSM to support high density personal communications, Proc. IEEE ICC, pp. 1698-1720, 1992. [24] P. Mermelstein, The IS-54 digital cellular standard, The Mobile Communications Handbook, J.D. Gibson (Editor-inChief), CRC Press & IEEE Press, 419-429, 1996. [25] N. Shivakumar and J. Widom, User prole replication for faster location lookup in mobile environments, Proc. ACM MOBICOM95, pp. 161-169, Nov. 1995. [26] W.H.W. Tuttlebee, Cordless personal communicatins, IEEE Commun. Mag., pp. 42-53, Dec. 1992. [27] W. Wong and V. Leung, Location management for next generation personal communication networks, IEEE Network, pp. 8-14, Sep/Oct. 2000. [28] Y. Xiao, A dynamic anchor-cell assisted paging with an optimal timer for PCS networks, IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 7, no. 6, Jun. 2003. [29] Y. Xiao, Y. Fang and Y.-B. Lin, Implicit deregistration in 3G cellular networks, Proceedings of IEEE 2003 International Conference on Communications, (IEEE ICC 2003), 11-15 May, 2003 Anchorage, AK, USA. [30] J. Zhang, Location management in cellular networks, in Handbook of Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing, Ivan Stojmenovic (Editor), John Wiley & Sons, pp. 27-49, 2002.

0-7803-8356-7/04/$20.00 (C) 2004 IEEE

IEEE INFOCOM 2004