Hybrid location update scheme for future PCS networks

Future personal communication service (PCS) networks consider smaller cells to accommodate continuously growing population of subscribers. That results in frequent location update and consequently higher signaling cost. Among various schemes proposed for improving the efficiency of location management, the distance-based and the direction-based location update methods work well for just certain mobility patterns. In this paper, we propose a hybrid location update (HLU) scheme, which takes into account both the moving distance and the moving direction when deciding on updating the location. We analyze the performance of the HLU under different mobility patterns and call-to-mobility ratios based on a 2D Markov walk model. The numerical results demonstrate that the HLU scheme can achieve better performance than the distance-based or the direction-based methods applied individually.