Mobility Management Scheme with Mobility Prediction in Wireless Communication Networks

Abstract

Many registration schemes have been proposed to reduce the signaling cost required for user’s mobility management in wireless communication networks. Various results on mobility management schemes to minimize the total signaling cost have been reported. The objective of this study was to analyze a registration scheme that could deal with mobility prediction and corresponding flexible tracking area list (TAL) forming. In this scheme, based on mobility prediction and corresponding TAL forms, a new TAL was constructed such that the registration cost could be minimized. In addition, a semi-Markov process model was newly presented for the registration scheme considering mobility prediction and corresponding flexible TAL forming for two different environments: urban and rural. Simulation studies were also performed to validate the accuracy of the semi-Markov process model. Numerical results showed that analytical and simulation results were very close (average relative error of 1.4%). The registration cost decreased as the moving probability (q) to the predicted direction increased. The performance of the proposed scheme was superior to distance-based registration (DBR) or TAL-based scheme especially when q was high. When call-to-mobility ratio was less than or equal to 1 corresponding to current small cell configurations, the proposed scheme outperformed the DBR or TAL-based scheme.